Speaker Biographies

Kenneth Anderson is a professor of international law at American University’s Washington College, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.  He writes on international law, human rights and the laws of war, international development finance, and international nongovernmental organizations, and is completing a book on UN reform, global governance, and international NGOs.  He is formerly director of the Human Rights Watch arms division and general counsel of the Open Society Institute.

Peter Berkowitz teaches at George Mason University School of Law and is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.  He is co-founder and director of the Israel Program on Constitutional Government, a member of the policy advisory board at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and served as a senior consultant to the President’s Council on Bioethics. He is the author of Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999), and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Harvard University Press, 1995).  He is the editor of the companion volumes The Future of American Intelligence (Hoover Institution Press, 2005); Terrorism, the Laws of War, and the Constitution: Debating the Enemy Combatant Cases (Hoover Institution Press, 2005); and Never a Matter of Indifference: Sustaining Virtue in a Free Republic (Hoover Institution Press, 2003) among others. With coeditor Tod Lindberg he has launched Hoover studies in politics, economics, and society, published in cooperation with Rowman and Littlefield. He has written articles, essays, and reviews on a variety of subjects for a variety of publications, including the American Political Science Review, Commentary, Critical Review, the Jerusalem Post, the London Review of Books, National Review, The New Republic, Policy Review, the Public Interest, the Times Literary Supplement, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, the Wilson Quarterly, and the Yale Law Journal.  He is also at work on two books, The Liberal Spirit in America, which describes our liberalism and shows what is necessary to conserve it, and Rediscovering Liberalism, which collects a variety of his essays.

William S. Dodge is professor of law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Professor Dodge teaches International Business Transactions and International Litigation and Arbitration and is a coauthor, with Detlev F. Vagts and Harold Hongju Koh, of the coursebook Transnational Business Problems (3d ed. Foundation Press 2003). He has also written extensively about the history of the Alien Tort Statute and authored the amicus brief of Professors of Federal Jurisdiction and Legal History in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, the position of which the Supreme Court adopted. He served as a law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun.

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-U.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), and coauthor, along with Tim Wu, of Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World (forthcoming, Oxford University Press, 2006).

Thomas Goldstein is the founding partner of Goldstein & Howe, P.C., and he teaches Supreme Court litigation at Stanford Law School and Harvard Law School.  The practice of Goldstein & Howe is principally devoted to Supreme Court litigation and the firm is counsel in eight merits cases this term.  The firm also produces a weblog devoted to the Court, www.scotusblog.com.  Mr. Goldstein has argued sixteen cases at the Supreme Court.  He argued the first case of this term, Tum v. Barber Foods, and won unanimously.  In November, he argued Georgia v. Randolph, which is pending.  Last Term, he successfully argued Spector v. Norwegian Cruise Lines (involving the application of federal disability law to cruise ships) and Smith v. City of Jackson (involving disparate impact age discrimination claims). Mr. Goldstein has recently been named by the National Law Journal as one of the nation’s leading attorneys under the age of forty (profiled as one of the top ten); by American Lawyer as one of the nation’s top forty-five attorneys under the age of forty-five; by Legal Times as one of the leading appellate lawyers in Washington, D.C.; and by Washingtonian as one of the leading constitutional lawyers and one of a half-dozen attorneys to watch in the twenty-first century in Washington, D.C.  Before founding Goldstein & Howe, Tom was an attorney with Boies & Schiller, LLP (now Boies, Schiller & Flexner, LLP) and Jones Day Reavis & Pogue, and he served as a law clerk to the Hon. Patricia M. Wald of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Morton H. Halperin is director of U.S. Advocacy at the Open Society Institute and executive director of the Open Society Policy Center.  He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.  Mr. Halperin served in the Clinton, Nixon and Johnson administrations, most recently as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State (1998-2001).  From 1975­­­-92, Dr. Halperin directed the Center for National Security Studies, a project of the American Civil Liberties Union which sought to reconcile requirements of national security with civil liberties.  From 1984-92, he also directed the Washington office of the ACLU where he was responsible for its national legislative program.  Mr.  Halperin has published a number of books -- including Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, The Democracy Advantage, and Protecting Democracy  – and articles on subjects including civil liberties and American foreign policy.  He has testified often before Congressional Committees.  Mr. Halperin is chairman of the Board, Democracy Coalition Project, and a member of the boards of DATA and the Constitution Project.  He is the chair of the advisory board of the Center for National Security Studies and chairman of the board of the Health Privacy Project, Georgetown University.

John D. Hutson is dean and president of Franklin Pierce Law Center.  He was commissioned in the U.S. Navy upon graduation from college and continued his career in the Navy for twenty-eight years after earning a Master of Laws degree. His numerous military duty assignments included trial prosecution and defense; staff judge advocate for a variety of commands around the country; and serving as executive assistant to the judge advocate general and to the director of NCIS.  He served three tours at the Navy Office of Legislative Affairs, including two as the director.  Dean Hutson was promoted to the rank of rear admiral and assumed duties as the judge advocate general of the Navy in May, 1997.  As the Navy JAG, he was the senior uniformed legal advisor to the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations, and was responsible for over 1,800 uniformed and civilian lawyers and for the provision of legal services around the world for the Department of the Navy.  Dean Hutson was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit (with three gold stars), Meritorious Service Medal (with two gold stars), Navy Commendation Medal, and the Navy Achievement Medal, as well as other awards.  Dean Hutson is a noted commentator on matters of national interest relating to the military, human rights, and the rule of law.  He has authored numerous opinion pieces, is a frequent guest on National Public Radio, and has appeared on national television broadcasts including NBC Nightly News, the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline with Ted Koppel, CNN, CNN International, C-Span, BBC, 60 Minutes, ABC Special, 20-20, PBS, Hardball with Chris Mathews and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly.

Julian Ku is a professor of law at Hofstra University School of Law.  Before joining the Hofstra faculty in 2002, Professor Ku served as a law clerk to Judge Jerry Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and as an Olin Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Virginia Law School. Professor Ku also practiced as an associate at the New York City law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, specializing in litigation and arbitration arising out of international disputes.  Professor Ku’s main research interest is the intersection of international and domestic law. He has published articles on the constitutional aspects of foreign relations in the Yale Law Journal, Supreme Court Review, Minnesota Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, and the Virginia Journal of International Law. He also blogs regularly at Opinio Juris.

Andrew C. McCarthy is senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a former federal prosecutor, and a contributor at National Review Online.  From 1993 through 1996, while an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, he led the prosecution against the jihad organization of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, in which a dozen Islamic militants were convicted of conducting a war of urban terrorism against the United States that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks.  Mr. McCarthy also made major contributions to the prosecutions of the bombers of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the millennium plot attack Los Angeles International Airport.  Following the September 11 attacks, Mr. McCarthy supervised the U.S. Attorney’s Anti-Terrorism Command Post in New York City, coordinating investigative and preventive efforts with numerous federal and state law enforcement and intelligence agencies.  From 1999 through 2003, he was the chief assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District’s satellite office, which is responsible for federal law enforcement in six counties north of New York City.  Mr. McCarthy is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Justice Department’s highest honors: the Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award (1996) and Distinguished Service Award (1988).  He has served as a special assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, and as an associate independent counsel in the investigation of a former cabinet official.  He has also been an adjunct professor of law both at the Fordham University School of Law and at New York Law School.  He writes extensively on a variety of legal, social and political issues for National Review and Commentary, among other publications, as well as providing commentary for various television and radio broadcasts. 

David H. Moore is assistant professor of law at the University of Kentucky College of Law. From 1996 to 2000, Professor Moore worked as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Federal Programs Branch, after which he clerked for then Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Prior to joining the University of Kentucky law faculty, Professor Moore researched and taught at the University of Chicago Law School as an Olin Fellow. Professor Moore's scholarship focuses on international law and international human rights.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East (including Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, a project on democracy for the Arab world, a roundtable of experts to discuss global energy security, and a project to develop bilateral relations between India and the United States. 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. Ms. Pletka has also been a journalist based in Washington and the Middle East.

Professor Beth Stephens is a professor at Rutgers-Camden School of Law.  She has published a variety of articles on the relationship between international and domestic law, focusing on the enforcement of international human rights norms through domestic courts and the incorporation of international law into U.S. law. She has written extensively on the historical origins of the Alien Tort Statute as well as its modern application. Professor Stephens has been involved in human rights legal advocacy as an activist, plaintiff, investigator, litigator, professor and scholar. She spent six years living in Nicaragua in the 1980s, investigating human rights issues and studying efforts to reform the legal system. From 1990-1995, she was in charge of the international human rights docket at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.  As a cooperating attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights and a member of the board of directors of the Center for Justice and Accountability, Professor Stephens continues to litigate human rights cases, including claims filed against U.S.-based corporations alleging responsibility for human rights violations committed in the course of their activities abroad and cases against the U.S. government alleging human rights abuses. She authored an amicus brief on behalf of international human rights groups in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, the 2004 case in which the Supreme Court upheld the validity of human rights litigation in U.S. courts under the Alien Tort Statute. A second edition of her book, International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts (1996), will be published in late 2006.  Recent publications include Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain: “The Door Is Still Ajar” For Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts, 70 Brook. L. Rev. 533 (2005); “Upsetting Checks and Balances: The Bush Administration’s Flawed Efforts to Limit Human Rights Litigation,” 17 Harv. Human Rts J.169 (2004); “Individuals Enforcing International Human Rights Law: The Comparative and Historical Context,” 52 DePaul Law Review 433 (2002).

Stuart S. Taylor Jr. is a weekly opinion columnist for National Journal and contributing editor for Newsweek, writing about legal, policy and political issues of national and international importance. He is also a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.  Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering from 1978-1980 and joined the New York Times Washington bureau in 1980, covering legal affairs from 1980-1985 and the Supreme Court from 1985-1988. Since then he has written commentary and in-depth magazine articles for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997 and for National Journal and Newsweek since 1998. He has also been published in other periodicals including The New Republic, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post and has contributed chapters to various books. He has appeared on all major television and radio networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and Court TV.  Taylor's various journalism honors include a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award in 1991; being a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 1997, and in 1993; a second-place National Headliner Award in 2002 for best special magazine column on one subject; and a nomination by the New York Times in 1988 for a Pulitzer Prize for his Supreme Court coverage.

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, and is the author of The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11 (University of Chicago Press, 2005).