Speaker Biographies

R. Ted Cruz is the solicitor general of Texas. Appointed by Texas attorney general Greg Abbott in January 2003, he is the chief appellate lawyer for the State of Texas. Mr. Cruz has authored over fifty U.S. Supreme Court briefs and presented twenty-six oral arguments, including six in the U.S. Supreme Court. Since 2004 he has served as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches U.S. Supreme Court litigation. Mr. Cruz previously served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning for the Federal Trade Commission, as associate deputy attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, and as Department of Justice coordinator for the Bush-Cheney transition team. During the Florida presidential recount, he helped assemble the Bush legal team, devise legal strategy, and draft pleadings in the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts. From 1999 to 2000, Mr. Cruz served as domestic policy advisor to the Bush-Cheney campaign, advising then-Governor George W. Bush on a wide range of policy matters, with primary responsibility for legal policy.

Michael J. Matheson is a visiting professor at the George Washington University School of Law, where he teaches courses on international law and conflict resolution. He recently served as a member of the United Nations (UN) International Law Commission and argued many cases before international tribunals, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ). He served for more than twenty-eight years at the U.S. Department of State, including stints as acting legal adviser or principal deputy legal adviser from 1990 to 2000. While at the State Department, he led efforts to create the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the UN Compensation Commission for Gulf War claims. Mr. Matheson headed the U.S. delegation, with the rank of ambassador, to the UN negotiations on conventional weapons. After leaving the State Department, he directed the international law program at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 2000–01 and was a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace in 2001–02. He has served as a member of the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law, the executive council of the American Society of International Law, and the Council on Foreign Relations; and he has served as director of research at the Hague Academy of International Law. Mr. Matheson has just completed a book on the Security Council in the post–Cold War period.

John O. McGinnis is a professor of law at Northwestern University’s School of Law. Before joining the faculty at Northwestern, he clerked for Judge Kenneth W. Starr of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. From 1987 to 1991, Mr. McGinnis was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He has also been chairman of the national advisory committee on free trade agreements and labor standards. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative includes him to the roster of Americans who can be appointed as panelists to resolve World Trade Organization disputes. Mr. McGinnis contributes regularly to both law reviews and popular journals.

Michael D. Ramsey is a professor of law at the University of San Diego School of Law. He served as senior articles editor of the Stanford Journal of International Law, and he clerked for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and then for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Mr. Ramsey practiced law with Latham & Watkins in San Diego before joining the faculty in 1995. His publications include The Constitution’s Text in Foreign Affairs (Harvard University Press, 2007), “Textualism and War Powers” in the University of Chicago Law Review, “The Executive Power over Foreign Affairs” in the Yale Law Journal (with Saikrishna Prakash), and “The Power of the States in Foreign Affairs” in the Notre Dame Law Review.

Peter “Bo” Rutledge is an associate professor of law at the Catholic University of America, where his teaching and research interests include international dispute resolution (arbitration and litigation) and criminal law. A former law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Mr. Rutledge regularly advises parties and lawyers in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Before joining Catholic University, Mr. Rutledge practiced at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr), where his practice included Supreme Court work; and at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where his practice concentrated on international arbitration. He is coauthor, with Gary Born, of International Civil Litigation in the United States (Aspen Publishers, 2006). He has published articles in various journals, including the University of Chicago Law Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review and the Georgia Law Review.

Edward T. Swaine is an associate professor of law at the George Washington University School of Law. Previously, he was an associate professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School and had a secondary appointment in the University of Pennsylvania Law School. During a 2005–06 leave from Penn, Mr. Swaine served as the counselor on international law at the U.S. Department of State. He was the editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal; clerked for the late Judge Alvin B. Rubin of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals; was a member of the civil appellate staff at the U.S. Department of Justice; and practiced law at the Brussels office of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton, where his work focused on European community law and antitrust. Mr. Swaine’s research interests include public international law, foreign relations law, and international antitrust, and he has published work in many law journals. He has consulted on matters involving public international law, antitrust, intellectual property, and international litigation and arbitration.

Edwin D. Williamson retired as a partner and became senior counsel at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP at the end of 2006. Except for serving as the State Department’s legal adviser from 1990 to 1993, he has spent his entire professional career at Sullivan & Cromwell. At the firm, Mr. Williamson had a broad domestic and international financing and transactions practice. In addition to public policy work in the international investment and corporate governance areas, Mr. Williamson is an active participant on panels and other forums involving public international law and national security issues.

John Yoo is a visiting scholar at AEI and a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall), where he has taught since 1993. From 2001 to 2003, 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 to 1996, where he advised on constitutional issues and judicial nominations. Mr. Yoo was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal and clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. He joined the Boalt faculty in 1993, and then clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. 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 War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006) and The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11 (University of Chicago Press, 2005).

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