Speaker biographies
Jeffrey Rosen is a professor of law at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. He is the author of The Most Democratic Branch (Oxford University Press, 2006), The Naked Crowd (Random House, 2005), and The Unwanted Gaze (Random House, 2001). His essays and commentaries have appeared on National Public Radio and in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker, for which he has been a staff writer. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the ten best magazine journalists in America and the Los Angeles Times called him “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.”
Gary J. Schmitt is a resident scholar and director of AEI’s Program on Advanced Strategic Studies. Prior to coming to AEI, he helped found and served as executive director of the Project for the New American Century. In the early 1980s, Dr. Schmitt was a member of the professional staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and, from 1982–84, served as the committee’s minority staff director. In 1984, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the post of executive director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He served in that position until 1988. He has since held visiting fellowships at The National Interest and the Brookings Institution, served as coordinator for the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence’s Working Group on Intelligence Reform, and worked as a consultant to the Department of Defense. In addition, he has been an adjunct professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Kenneth W. Starr is dean and professor of law at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California. He is also of counsel to the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, P.C., where he was a partner from 1993–2004, 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 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 1983–89, as counselor to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith from 1981–83, and as law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger from 1975–77 and Fifth Circuit judge David W. Dyer from 1973–74. 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 from the FBI, the Edmund Randolph Award for Outstanding Service in the Department of Justice, and the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service.
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 also 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) and War by Other Means (Grove/Atlantic Press, 2006).
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