Speaker biographies

John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI, where he studies foreign policy and international organizations. Ambassador Bolton served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006. From May 2001 to May 2005, he was under secretary of state for arms control and international security. Prior to this, Ambassador Bolton was the senior vice president of AEI and also held a number of positions in public service, including assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, 1989–93; assistant attorney general, 1985–89; assistant administrator for program and policy coordination, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), 1982–83; and USAID general counsel, 1981–82. From 1983 to 1985, Ambassador Bolton was an associate and then member of Covington & Burling, LLP. He is the author of Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad (Simon and Schuster, 2007).

Honorable Ronald A. Cass is the chairman of the Center for the Rule of Law and the president of Cass & Associates, PC. He serves as international arbitrator in NAFTA, ICSID, UNCITRAL, and AAA cases. He served under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as vice chairman and commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission. Mr. Cass is dean emeritus of Boston University School of Law and was the Melville Madison Bigelow Professor of Law from 1995 to 2004. He is the chairman of the Federalist Society Practice Group on International Law and National Security and has authored several books, including The Rule of Law in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); International Trade Law, with Michael Knoll (Ashgate Publishing, 2003); and Administrative Law, with Colin S. Diver and Jack M. Beermann (5th ed., Aspen Law & Business, 2006).

James P. Kelly III is the director of international affairs for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. From 2000 to 2004, Mr. Kelly served as the president and general counsel for the Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., a public interest, religious, and educational liberty law firm. He is the founder and former executive director of Georgia Community Foundation, Inc. In 2001, he served on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations International Consultative Conference on School Education in relation with Freedom of Religion and Belief, Tolerance and Non-discrimination in Madrid, Spain.

Leonard A. Leo is the executive vice president of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. Previously, Mr. Leo served as a law clerk to Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Judge Randall Rader of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. He also worked as an associate attorney in the law firm of Sills Beck. Mr. Leo serves as on officer of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and works as a consultant on litigation and legislative projects. He has published many articles and is coeditor of Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (Simon & Schuster, 2004).

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East, South Asia, terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq and a project on democracy in the Arab world. She recently served as a member of the congressionally mandated Task Force on the United Nations, established by the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to AEI, she served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Grover Joseph Rees III is the special representative for social issues in the International Organizations Bureau at the Department of State. From January 2001 until December 2002, he served as counsel to the Committee on International Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ambassador Rees served as general counsel of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1991 until 1993 and as chief justice (and later associate justice) of the High Court of American Samoa between 1986 and 1991. He was an assistant professor of law at the University of Texas, a law clerk to Associate Justice Albert Tate Jr. of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, and the press assistant to Representative David C. Treen (R.-La.).

Claudia Rosett is a journalist-in-residence at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writing on international affairs. Ms. Rosett regularly writes for publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard. Her work on exposing the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal earned her the 2005 Eric Breindel Award and the Mightier Pen Award. Ms. Rosett served as a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board in New York from 1997 to 2002 and as a reporter and then bureau chief in the journal’s Moscow bureau between 1993 and 1996. For her on-site coverage of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, Ms. Rosett won an Overseas Press Club Citation for Excellence.

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