Speaker biographies
Brian P. Brooks is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of O’Melveny & Myers LLP. He represents financial services organizations in class actions, major trials and appeals, and state and federal enforcement actions. His recent banking class action engagements include In re Ocwen Federal Bank FSB Mortgage Servicing Litigation (N.D. Ill.), In re Katrina Canal Breaches Litigation (E.D. La.), Medlock Southwest Management Co. v. Fannie Mae (E.D. Tex.), In re Ford Motor Co./Citibank (South Dakota), and N.A. Cardholder Rebate Litigation (W.D. Wash.). Mr. Brooks is a member of the American Law Institute and its consultative group on the principles of aggregate litigation. He also serves as chair of the Federalist Society’s class action committee and editor of its bulletin, Class Action Watch. Mr. Brooks is a faculty member of the Practising Law Institute’s Consumer Financial Services Litigation Institute and frequently speaks on financial services and litigation reform topics.
Thomas W. Merrill is the Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. 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 in journals and books, notably, “The Making of the Second Rehnquist Court,” St. Louis University Law Journal (2003), “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); and “The Economics of Public Use” Cornell Law Review (1986) . His teaching and research interests include administrative, property, and environmental law.
Amy Quester is a senior policy and litigation counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending. She is also an adjunct professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. Prior to joining the Center for Responsible Lending, she worked in the division of financial practices of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Ms. Quester also served as a trial attorney in the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She clerked for Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and Judge Chester J. Straub of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Todd J. Zywicki is a professor of law at George Mason University School of Law and senior fellow of the James Buchanan Center’s Program on Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Zywicki served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including those from Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. Professor Zywicki was recently named a member of the United States Department of Justice’s study group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.” Professor Zywicki is the author of more than fifty articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is a contributor to the popular legal weblog The Volokh Conspiracy and is currently the chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation’s Freedom Museum in Chicago.
Ted Frank is a resident fellow at AEI and director of the AEI Liability Project, managing the Institute’s research about liability reform proposals, tort law, class actions and civil procedure, and other related issues. Before joining AEI, Mr. Frank worked at law firms in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and clerked for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook. His litigation work included Vioxx and automobile product liability cases, class action defense, and antitrust and patent cases.
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