speakers' bios

Keynote Speaker
Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
U.S. Supreme Court

Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr., Associate Justice, was born in Trenton, New Jersey, April 1, 1950. He married Martha-Ann Bomgardner in 1985, and has two children-Philip and Laura. He served as a law clerk for Leonard I. Garth of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1976-1977. He was Assistant U.S. Attorney, District of New Jersey, 1977-1981, Assistant to the Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice, 1981-1985, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, 1985-1987, and U.S. Attorney, District of New Jersey, 1987-1990. He was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1990. President George W. Bush nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat on January 31, 2006.

Friday Evening Speaker
Alan B. Morrison
Visiting Professor, Washington College of Law at American University
Co-founder & Former Director, Public Citizen Litigation Group

In 1972 Mr. Morrison founded the Public Citizen Litigation Group with Ralph Nader, where he worked until February 2004, serving as its director for about 25 years. The Litigation Group docket extended to areas such as open government, separation of powers, the legal profession, reining in administrative agencies, consumer protection, protecting dissidents in labor unions, representing absentees in class actions, and, most recently, protecting consumers and others who wish to use the Internet to express their views. He has personally argued 20 times in the Supreme Court. While he was with the Litigation Group, it created a project that helps other lawyers who have public interest cases in the Supreme Court.

Mr. Morrison's experience also includes work in the Office of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, special counsel to the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, and teaching at Harvard, NYU, Stanford and Hawaii law schools. He is currently a visiting professor at the Washington College of Law at American University. Mr. Morrison is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School.

Women in Public Interest Legal Careers Workshop
Lise Adams

Lise B. Adams serves as the Director of the Family Permanency Project at The Children's Law Center (CLC) in Washington, D.C. In this capacity, Lise represents and supervises attorneys representing foster parents and relative caregivers in complex adoption, guardianship, and custody proceedings in D.C. Superior Court. She also manages CLC's pro bono program, mentoring pro bono attorneys representing adult caregivers in neglect and non-neglect matters and serving as guardians ad litem to children in custody cases. Lise graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2003, where she was awarded the Herbert L. Kramer/Herbert Bangel Community Service Award, the Claire Corcoran Award, and the Mortimer Caplin Public Service Fellowship. She served as a Powell Fellow/Staff Attorney at the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia from 2003-2005, representing low-income custodial and non-custodial parents in child support matters, and advocating for systemic reform of the District's child support enforcement system. Lise was awarded a Frederick B. Abramson Service Award in 2003.

Status of Forces Agreement Panel
Charles A. Allen

Chuck Allen has served as Deputy General Counsel (International Affairs) since May 2000. He is responsible for providing legal services and advice on the Defense Department's wide range of international issues, and for supervising a staff of 14 attorneys. Areas of responsibility include legal advice on Department of Defense planning and conduct of military operations in the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq, including the law of armed conflict and war crimes, war powers, coalition relations and assistance, and activities of U.S. forces under international law and relevant UN Security Council Resolutions; arms control negotiations and implementation, non-proliferation, and cooperative threat reduction; status of forces agreements; cooperative research and development programs; international litigation; law of outer space; and multilateral agreements.

He previously served, while on active duty in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, as Deputy Legal Adviser, National Security Council, 1998-2000, providing the National Security Advisor and senior staff advice on international and domestic law, including constitutional, statutory and administrative law. Chuck Allen graduated from Stanford University with an A.B. in Economics; from University of Georgia Law School, where he served as a Research Editor on the Georgia Law Review; and from George Washington University Law School with an LL.M. in International & Comparative Law.

2008 Campaign Retrospective Panel
Adam Ambrogi

Adam Ambrogi (J.D., University of Texas, 2002; B.A., University of Virginia, 1998) has worked at the forefront of voting rights and election policy issues throughout the past three federal election cycles. Mr. Ambrogi served as Special Counsel to Commissioner Ray Martinez of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission during the 2004 and 2006 elections, where he worked closely with the implementation of the Help America Vote Act. Since 2006 Ambrogi has served as Counsel to the U.S. Senate Rules Committee. During his time at the Rules Committee, Ambrogi has worked on the Ballot Integrity Act, Bipartisan Electronic Voting Reform Act, Veteran Voting Support Act, and Robocall Privacy Act. He has also delivered speeches to the National Organization of Election Officials and the Just Democracy Conference at Harvard Law School.

Project Innocence Panel
Marvin Anderson

In December 2001, Marvin Lamont Anderson became the ninety-ninth person in the United States to be exonerated due to postconviction DNA testing. On December 14, 1982, then eighteen years old, he was convicted by a jury of robbery, forcible sodomy, abduction, and two counts of rape. The court sentenced Anderson to a total of two hundred and ten years imprisonment in the Virginia State Penitentiary. Anderson went to prison in 1983 and was released after fifteen years, facing lifetime parole. After being paroled, Anderson continued his efforts to clear his name.

2008 Campaign Retrospective Panel
Joe Birkenstock

Joseph M. Birkenstock joined Caplin & Drysdale in 2005 after serving as Chief Counsel of the Democratic National Committee and practicing political law with a firm in Los Angeles. While at the DNC, Mr. Birkenstock worked closely with the party's fundraisers and campaign staff to help ensure their compliance with the myriad of state and federal laws governing their activities, and took primary responsibility for responding to several investigations into Democratic Party fundraising following the 1996 presidential election. He also assisted in the litigation and public relations efforts surrounding the 2000 Florida recount and helped implement the DNC's transition to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regime. Mr. Birkenstock also lectures and writes on topics related to campaign finance and political law. He teaches a seminar on the Law of Politics at UVA. Mr. Birkenstock is a graduate of Mount Saint Mary's University and the George Washington University Law School.

Separation of Powers Panel
Jamie Brown

Jamie joined Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti after serving as Google Inc.'s first in-house lobbyist. Before that, Jamie served as a Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs in the White House, managing the Senate strategies for the confirmations of U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito. She also served as the liaison to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Before serving in the White House, Jamie held positions at the U. S. Department of Justice, including Acting Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs, Director of the Office of Intergovernmental and Public Liaison and Advisor to the Attorney General.

From 1998-2002, Jamie worked as a lobbyist at Verner Liipfert Bernhard McPherson and Hand, where she represented clients before Congress and the Executive branch on issues including trade, appropriations, tort reform, base closure, and environmental regulations. Jamie began her career as Legislative Counsel to U. S. Senator Connie Mack (R-FL), a member of the Senate Republican leadership.

Careers in the Federal Government Workshop
Tyrone Brown

Ty Brown is an attorney in the National Security Division at the Department of Justice where he recently began working on DOJ's responsibilities under the Foreign Investment and National Security Act and on matters referred to DOJ by the Federal Communications Commission. From 2003 to mid-2008 Mr. Brown worked in the National Security Division's Office of Intelligence, where he represented the U.S. in counterterrorism and counterintelligence proceedings before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In 2007, Mr. Brown completed a detail as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia. Before working at DOJ, he worked at the private law firm Covington and Burling in Washington D.C. Mr. Brown graduated from Harvard Law School in 2000 and Brown University in 1995, and lives in Maryland with his wife and daughter.

Preschool to Prison Pipeline Panel
Billy Cannaday

Billy K. Cannaday, Jr., joined the University of Virginia on October 1, 2008, as Dean of the School of Continuing & Professional Studies. As Dean, Dr. Cannaday leads one of the University's 10 schools, with the mission of providing undergraduate and graduate degrees, professional development certification, personal enrichment courses and travel programs, serving the surrounding communities and more than 15,000 adult students annually at seven regional academic centers around the commonwealth, in Richmond, Roanoke, Abingdon, Falls Church, Hampton Roads, Charlottesville and at the FBI National Academy in Quantico.

Over the past thirty-four years, Dr. Cannaday's career has demonstrated a commitment to education and public service. Prior to joining the University, Dr. Cannaday was appointed to a four-year term as Virginia's Superintendent of Public Instruction by Governor Timothy Kaine. He has worked in elementary, middle, and high school levels and also held administrative posts at school and division levels in urban and suburban communities. His knowledge and understanding of local, state, and national policies and practices provide relevant perspectives on the school-student-home-community relationship and the implications for preventing or enabling the pre-school to prison pipeline.

Standing in Environmental Law Panel
Marcia Cleveland

Marcia Cleveland graduated from Yale Law School in 1971. She began her career working in legal services in New York City. She went to work at the Natural Resources Defense Council where she specialized in issues relating to toxic substances in the environment and the workplace. In 1979, she became Chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York Attorney General's Office. Under her leadership the Bureau grew dramatically, and handled high profile cases such as New York's Love Canal litigation. The bureau also did many landmark cases that helped define the scope of CERCLA in the early days after it was adopted.

After moving to Maine, Ms. Cleveland worked for the state's Attorney General. Her most significant case was a successful enforcement action against the United States Navy for violations of Maine's hazardous waste rules, in which Maine ultimately collected penalties in spite of a sovereign immunity defense. After working for the state's leading labor law firm for five years, Ms. Cleveland founded her own firm specializing in environmental, asbestos and worker's compensation litigation. In 2008 Ms. Cleveland earned a Master of Environmental Management degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, with a concentration in Climate Change.

Careers in International Public Interest Workshop
John Cobau

John Cobau is Chief Counsel for International Commerce at the U.S. Department of Commerce, serving as the lead attorney for the International Trade Administration and overseeing a staff of 12 lawyers. Since coming to Commerce in 1997, Mr. Cobau has been personally involved in the negotiation and implementation of many international agreements, including free trade agreements, textile agreements, and multilateral trade agreements. He has been actively involved in the enactment and implementation of the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007. He spent 2007 as Director for International Trade and Investment at the National Security Council. Before coming to Commerce, Mr. Cobau practiced trade law with a private firm in Washington, DC for four years. He is a graduate of Princeton University and University of Michigan Law School.

Standing in Environmental Law Panel
Donald Cockrill

Donald Cockrill, a native of Alexandria, Virginia, graduated from the University of Virginia Law School in 1968. Following 3-1/2 years of active duty as a legal officer in the United States Navy and a judicial clerkship, Mr. Cockrill joined the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. where he litigated complex civil fraud cases on behalf of the U.S. government from 1973 to 1979.

Mr. Cockrill joined Ogletree Deakins in 1979, where he has concentrated on both labor relations/employment law and environmental/toxic tort litigation. As one of the firm's more experienced litigators, Mr. Cockrill has represented a number of corporations in complex toxic tort, products liability, business, medical malpractice, and environmental cases involving alleged personal injury, economic, and property damages. Through this representation, Mr. Cockrill has acquired an expertise in the numerous scientific fields that often are at issue, including toxicology, epidemiology, lab testing procedures, and immunology. Mr. Cockrill's cases have included a wide range of substances, including PCBs, asbestos, pesticides and industrial chemicals.

School Choice Panel
Justin Cohen

Justin C. Cohen is Director of the Office of Portfolio Management at the District of Columbia Public Schools. DCPS serves nearly 50,000 students in the nation's capitol; in 2007, Mayor Adrian Fenty was given control over DCPS and tapped Michelle Rhee to serve as schools Chancellor. Under Chancellor Rhee, the office of portfolio management creates long term strategies for fostering quality, innovation, and growth in the DCPS schools portfolio. The office is responsible for new school creation, research and development, managing school autonomy projects, NCLB restructuring and school improvement, and implementing partnerships with school turnaround and management organizations.

Prior to joining DCPS, Justin was director of industry support and development for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. He also has served as director of business development for Edison Schools. Justin has a B.A. in cognitive neuroscience from Yale University.

School Choice Panel
Leigh Dingerson

Leigh Dingerson works on education policy and reform with low-income parents across the country, most recently with the Center for Community Change, where she built the Center's education organizing work between 1998-2008. She founded the Center's Partnerships for Change Project, which brought together organized parents and organized teachers to work collaboratively to improve public schools. Beginning in 2005, much of Leigh's work focused on school privatization and its impact on public ownership and accountability.

She is the author of "Dismantling a Community" (October 2006), about the takeover of the New Orleans Public Schools after Hurricane Katrina. Her later essay, "Unlovely: How the Market is Failing New Orleans Children," was published as part of a collection on charter schools (Keeping the Promise: The Debate Over Charter Schools; Rethinking Schools, 2008) which she co-edited. She is also the author of the recently released "Reclaiming the Education Charter," (Education Voters Institute, December 2008), a report on the impact of charter school policy in Ohio.

Prior to her work at the Center, Leigh served as Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty from 1987 - 1995. She worked as a community organizer with ACORN between 1978 and 1982.

Foreclosure Crisis Panel
Tom Domonoske

Tom Domonoske began practicing law in California in 1990 before moving to North Carolina where he taught classes at the University of North Carolina Law School. He then practiced as a legal aid lawyer in Virginia from 1993 to 1996. From July 1996 through August 2000, he was a Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke Law School. While at Duke, he maintained a small consumer law practice in Virginia through an Of Counsel relationship with the Law Office of Dale W. Pittman.

Starting in August 2000, Mr. Domonske returned to Virginia and has continued his practice with that office. His primary emphasis is on credit-related frauds, particularly regarding lending related to automobiles and homes. He has published many articles on several aspects of consumer law in various professional publications. In the past ten years he has given over 100 consumer law trainings at various events around the country and regularly trains JAG lawyers' for the United States military. He also sits on the Board of Directors of the Community Mediation Center.

Women in Public Interest Legal Careers Workshop
Kate Duvall

Kate joined the JustChildren Program in Charlottesville in 2008, coming from a two-year stint as the Pro-Bono Fellow with the Richmond Office of Hunton & Williams. She received her B.A. and law degrees at the University of Virginia. Kate's initial focus is juvenile justice issues.

School Choice Panel
Ramona Edelin, Ph.D.

Dr. Ramona Hoage Edelin is a scholar, activist and executive consultant with 30 years of experience in leadership to uplift and advance African Americans and the economically disadvantaged. Under her leadership, cutting-edge programs in education, community empowerment, and young adult leadership development have been established and sustained. Urban policy, the definition and cultivation of African American cultural leadership, and the building of policy collaborations have been her primary priorities

Project Innocence Panel
Paul Enzinna

Paul Enzinna represents individuals and corporations in civil and criminal matters-both at trial and on appeal-in courts across the country. He also conducts internal corporate investigations into allegations of procurement fraud, antitrust violations, and ethics violations.

Mr. Enzinna has represented several death penalty defendants, and as vice president and founding board member of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, he recently obtained DNA testing that cleared a Virginia man of a 1982 rape for which the man had been sentenced to more than 200 years in prison. The tests ultimately led to the first full pardon granted under Virginia's new post-conviction DNA testing statute. In 2002, he was named R. Kenneth Mundy Lawyer of the Year by the District of Columbia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

After graduating from law school, Mr. Enzinna served as a law clerk to the Honorable J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Mr. Enzinna is an instructor for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, and prior to joining Baker Botts, was a partner at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, L.L.P.

Women in Public Interest Legal Careers Workshop
Ann G. Fort

Ann Fort has substantial experience representing clients in complex civil litigation, with a particular emphasis on protecting clients' rights in intellectual property matters, including obtaining TROs and preliminary injunctions. She has tried cases in state and federal courts before judges and juries and has participated in all aspects of alternative dispute resolution, including arbitrations and mediations.

Georgia Trend magazine has recognized Ann as one of the "Legal Elite" in 2006 and 2007. She has been a leader in the firm's pro bono and public service efforts. In 2008, Ann completed her eleventh year of habeas corpus representation of a Georgia death row inmate, winning commutation of his death sentence from the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Ann also serves homeless families as a volunteer at Hagar's House in Decatur, Georgia.

2008 Campaign Retrospective Panel
Ben Ginsberg

Benjamin Ginsberg is Co-Chair of the Public Policy Department at Patton Boggs and represents numerous political parties, political campaigns, candidates, members of Congress and state legislatures, Governors, corporations, trade associations, vendors, donors and individuals participating in the political process.

In both the 2004 and 2000 election cycles, Mr. Ginsberg served as national counsel to the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign; he played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount. He also represents the campaigns and leadership PACs of numerous members of the Senate and House, as well as the Republican National Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee. As counsel to the Republican Governors Association, Mr. Ginsberg also has experience on state legislative issues, including congressional redistricting. Mr. Ginsberg is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Georgetown University Law Center.

Public Interest in the Private Sector Workshop
Ryan Glasgow

Ryan Glasgow is an associate in Hunton & Williams Richmond office focusing on labor & employment law. Ryan serves as a member of the firm's pro bono guardianship team and as a volunteer attorney for the Legal Aid of Central Virginia Pro Bono Hotline. He also does pro bono work with a variety of not-for-profit organizations. He graduated from the Washington & Lee University School of Law

Status of Forces Agreement Panel
Col. David Graham

Mr. Graham is a retired Army Officer with over 35 years of experience as a Military Attorney, or Judge Advocate. He has an extensive background in International Law, with a mix of assignments in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Mr. Graham has a long standing relationship with the former Judge Advocate General's School and the University of Virginia, as he has served as a professor, a Department head, and Academic Director of the School, as well as the Director of the Center for Law and Military Operations, now an integral part of the Legal Center and School.

He is a published author in multiple legal journals and has lectured extensively in both US and international fora. His education includes: Texas A&M University, BA in History, 1966; The George Washington University, MA in International Affairs, 1968; The University of Texas School of Law, JD, 1971; Certificate, The Hague Academy of International Law, 1977. He is also a Distinguished Graduate of The National War College and a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College. He is admitted to: the Supreme Court of Texas, the Court of Military Appeals, and the Supreme Court of the United States.

Project Innocence Panel
John Grisham

John Grisham graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981 and spent the next ten years working a variety of criminal and civil cases for a small firm in Southaven. In 1983, Grisham was elected to the Mississippi house of representatives, a seat which he held for seven years.

In 1984, Grisham was inspired by a case he witnessed in court and began working on his first novel in his free time, while working sixty to eighty hour weeks at his firm. The novel, A Time to Kill, was rejected by several publishers before being accepted for a tiny print run. Grisham began The Firm almost immediately after, which was the key to his authorial success and had him named the best selling novelist of the nineties by Publishers Weekly. Grisham quit his jobs as a lawyer and politician and took up writing full time, producing, on average, one novel per year.

Grisham is a member of the board of directors of The Innocence Project, an organisation which attempts to exonerate wrongfully incarcerated prisoners through the use of DNA testing. He supports Little League baseball, his lifelong passion, and he is also dedicated to maintaining literary traditions in the Southern states of the U.S. by providing several scholarships. He has also done mission work with his wife in Brazil.

Preschool to Prison Pipeline Panel
Eden B. Heilman, J.D., M.S.W.

Eden Heilman is an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center's School-to-Prison Reform Project in New Orleans, Louisiana--a multi-faceted initiative aimed at dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline by pursuing systemic reforms to the public education system through litigation, community action, public education, and legislation. In her capacity as an attorney, Ms. Heilman provides both individual and systemic representation for children with emotional and behavioral disabilities throughout Louisiana as these children are typically the most vulnerable to exclusion from the public education system and inclusion in the juvenile justice system.

Her work has been instrumental in securing four of the most comprehensive settlement agreements in the country, encompassing approximately 25 percent of Louisiana's public school population. These four settlement agreements require the respective school districts to implement the program of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), an approach that includes proactive strategies for addressing student behavior and an alternative to the punitive disciplinary systems found in most school districts.

Prior to joining the Southern Poverty Law Center, Ms. Heilman was an attorney for the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL). She received her Juris Doctor from Loyola University New Orleans School of Law and her Master's Degree in Social Work from Tulane University School of Social Work with a focus on child and adolescent behavior.

Public Interest in the Private Sector Workshop
Tracey Hopper

Tracy Hopper practices family law and is an active member of the Charlottesville/Albemarle community. She has served as a member of the Albemarle County Planning Commission; board of directors for the Virginia Economic Development Corp.; vice chairwoman for the Voting Rights Restoration Committee in Charlottesville/Albemarle; and board of directors for the Legal Aid Justice Center.

School Choice Panel
Stefan Huh

Stefan Huh is the Director of the Office of Public Charter School Financing and Support (OPCSFS), an office within the District of Columbia's Office of the State Superintendent of Education. Since its programs' inception in 2001, the OPCSFS has awarded over $70 million for charter facilities, leveraging over $300 million of facility investments. In addition to financing charter facilities, design and implementation of new schools, and the dissemination of best practices, the OPCSFS has recently expanded its activities by funding initiatives of local charter support organizations; partnering on various programs with the District's sole authorizer, the DC Public Charter School Board; awarding competitive grants to schools for promising practices that boost school quality; and funding the replication of high performing schools.

Prior to joining the District of Columbia government in 2004, Mr. Huh worked as a Finance Manager in the private and not-for-profit sectors, including experience with Arthur Andersen LLP and with a $200 million endowment fund dedicated to supporting schools and programs for educating low-income children. In addition, Mr. Huh spent two and half years teaching high school as a Peace Corps volunteer in Independent Samoa. Mr. Huh received a Master of Public Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Business Administration (in Accounting) from James Madison University.

Project Innocence Panel
George Kendall

George H. Kendall is a senior counsel at Holland & Knight, LLP. He spends all of his time working with the firm's Community Services Team, a nine lawyer division that devotes itself entirely to pro bono litigation and projects. Mr. Kendall handles capital, criminal and civil rights cases in state and federal courts across the country.

From 1983 through 2003, he devoted nearly his entire practice to capital cases, first with the ACLU's Eleventh Circuit Capital Representation Project till 1988, then based in Atlanta, and from 1988 through 2003 with the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc, based in New York City. During the past two decades, he has closely monitored the Supreme Court and Congress for cases and legislation dealing with capital punishment, habeas corpus and racial discrimination. He has taught courses on the administration of the death penalty at Yale, Florida State and St. Johns, and has served as faculty at national capital litigation training conferences for the past twenty-five years.

In 2003, he successfully argued on behalf of indigent Texas death row inmate Delma Banks before the United States Supreme Court. Banks v. Dretke, 540 U.S. 668 (2004), and was the senior lawyer on the team that successfully represented indigent Tennessee death row inmate Paul House before the Supreme Court in 2006. House v. Bell, 126 S.Ct. 2064 (2006).

Standing in Environmental Law Panel
Edwin S. Kneedler

Edwin S. Kneedler is a Deputy Solicitor General in the United States Department of Justice. He is responsible for reviewing Supreme Court briefs and appeal and amicus recommendations in court of appeals cases on behalf of the United States Government in a variety of subject areas, including cases involving the Department of the Interior, Forest Service, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of Labor, as well as many constitutional and administrative law cases involving federal agencies generally.

Ed is a 1974 graduate of the University of Virginia Law School. He served as a law clerk to Judge Browning of the Ninth Circuit from 1974 to 1975. He served in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice from October 1975 until June 1979, when he joined the Office of the Solicitor General. He served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General for 14 years, until he was appointed as a Deputy Solicitor General in 1993.

Ed has argued more than 100 cases in the Supreme Court, including a number of environmental cases.

Separation of Powers Panel
Dahlia Lithwick

Dahlia Lithwick, is a senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate.com where she writes and edits the columns "Supreme Court Dispatches" and "Jurisprudence". She is a weekly legal commentator for the NPR show, Day to Day and a biweekly columnist for Newsweek. A graduate of Yale College and Stanford Law School, she clerked for Procter R Hug, then-chief judge of the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996. Lithwick's work has appeared in Harpers, Commentary, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the LA Times. She was awarded the Online News Association's award for online Supreme Court commentary in 2001, and again in 2005 for a torture series she coauthored for Slate. She was the first online journalist invited to sit on the Steering Committee for the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press.

Careers in Prosecution and Defense Workshop
Darby Lowe

Darby Lowe has worked in the Albemarle County Commonwealth's Attorney Office since 1994, and was named Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney in January 2008. Lowe had previously prosecuted in Williamsburg/James City County and the City of Richmond.

During her career, Lowe has successfully prosecuted over a hundred serious child abuse cases and has tried several cases where the defendants have been sentenced to 50+ years for their heinous crimes against children.

Lowe received a B.A. from the College of William and Mary, 1988 and a J.D. from the Marshall Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary, 1992.

Preschool to Prison Pipeline Panel
Katayoon Majd

Katayoon Majd is a Senior Staff Attorney at the National Juvenile Defender Center (NJDC), an organization dedicated to ensuring excellence in juvenile defense and promoting justice for all children. Prior to joining NJDC, she represented youth in abuse and neglect cases at the Children's Law Center in the District of Columbia. From 2000-2004, Katayoon specialized in educational equity litigation and advocacy as a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. In particular, she worked on Williams v. State of California, a class action aimed at ensuring equal access to educational opportunities for low-income students of color in public schools statewide.

To support her educational equity work, Katayoon was awarded a Ford Foundation New Voices Fellowship in 2000. Katayoon also serves on the adjunct faculty of the American University Washington College of Law. She holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School and an A.B. in Psychology, with a specialization in Health and Development, from Stanford University.

Status of Forces Agreement Panel
Bill Monahan

William G.P. Monahan is a Counsel on the majority staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). He is responsible for foreign policy issues, particularly relating to Europe, U.S. European Command, NATO, U.S. Central Command, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. He also focuses on issues relating to foreign security assistance, detention and interrogation operations, military commissions, and laws of armed conflict.

Prior to joining the SASC staff, Mr. Monahan was a Legal Adviser on arms control and nonproliferation issues with the State Department from 1999 to December 2003, and the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) from1994 until 1999, when ACDA was merged into the State Department. During this time, Mr. Monahan served as legal counsel on several U.S. delegations to talks implementing international arms control agreements, including the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, the START agreement, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He received his B.A. in history from Yale University in 1986 and a joint degree in 1994 combining a Masters in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School.

Foreclosure Crisis Panel
Ann Balcer Norton

Anne Balcer Norton is the Director of the Foreclosure Prevention Division of St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, Inc., which is the oldest housing non-profit in Baltimore City. Prior to joining St. Ambrose, Ms. Balcer Norton served as General Counsel for a national mortgage lender where she was responsible for origination and secondary market regulatory compliance, state licensing and risk management oversight across twenty-four states. She implemented company-wide ethics training and developed Zero Tolerance Fraud and Anti-Predatory Lending policies. Ms. Balcer Norton has written several pieces on mortgage lending, most notably: Reaching the Glass Usury Ceiling: Why State Ceilings and Federal Preemption Force Low-Income Borrowers into Subprime Mortgage Loans, 35 U. Balt. L. Rev. 215 (2005). She received her J.D., magna cum laude, with honors, from the University of Baltimore School of Law and her B.A. from Randolph Macon College.

Separation of Powers Panel
Jeremy Paris

Jeremy Paris, Chief Counsel for Nominations and Oversight for Chairman Patrick Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, manages the unit responsible for handling nominations to the United States Supreme Court, lower federal courts, and the Department of Justice. Paris has been a staffer for Senator Leahy since 2005, previously as Counsel and then Senior Counsel for Oversight and Investigations, advising Senator Leahy and other Democratic Judiciary Committee Members on nominations issues during the last two Congresses, including helping them prepare for the nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, and Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. In addition, Paris assists Senator Leahy in conducting oversight of the Department of Justice and the White House, supervising investigations into the firing of U.S. Attorneys and the politicization of the Department and works on legislative issues in the areas of civil rights, voting rights, and the administration of federal courts, including the 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Prior to coming to the Hill, Paris was a litigation associate at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLC, in Washington, D.C. after serving as a law clerk to Hon. Deborah K. Chasanow, United States District Court Judge for the District of Maryland. Paris received his B.A. in Political Science from Yale University in 1997 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2001.

Careers in the Federal Government Workshop
Stephen Pfleger

Mr. Pfleger graduated from Princeton University in 1983. He received his J.D. degree from Cornell Law School in 1986. He was an officer in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corp from 1987 to 1990. From 1990 to 1992 he was in private practice. In 1992 he was hired as an Assistant U. S. Attorney for the U. S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. He started in his present position with the Western District of Virginia in 2005. Mr. Pleger is currently acting as the Managing AUSA for the Charlottesville, Harrisonburg and Appellate Divisions.

Careers in International Public Interest Workshop
Eric Rassbach

Eric Rassbach directs The Becket Fund's domestic litigation practice. Since coming to The Becket Fund five years ago, Eric has represented people of many different faiths, including Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and others. His clients have included churches, synagogues, and religious schools across the country, the nation's oldest Hindu Temple, a Jewish inmate in the Texas state prison system, and schoolchildren who are defendants in the "one Nation under God" Pledge of Allegiance litigation. In his international practice, Eric represents the Juma Mosque Congregation in its lawsuit against Azerbaijan in the European Court of Human Rights and has been co-counsel in other ECHR lawsuits. He has also briefed the U.S. Helsinki Commission on religious liberty issues in Azerbaijan.

Eric holds an undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature from Haverford College and a law degree from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard International Law Journal. After law school, Eric clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Lee H. Rosenthal in Houston. He came to The Becket Fund after several years working in international project finance at Baker Botts LLP.

Careers in Prosecution and Defense Workshop
Seann Riley

Seann graduated from Georgetown University with a B.A. in Government. For two years following graduation, he lived on the island of Saipan, where he was a high school teacher and principal. Upon returning to the United States Seann attended the University of Michigan School of Social Work. While earning his MSW, Seann worked at the W.J. Maxey Training School for Boys, a maximum-security facility for delinquent male youth. Seann then matriculated at Tulane University Law School, where he earned his J.D. During law school, Seann worked at the St. Thomas Community Law Center, the Louisiana Appellate Project, and the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. He was also a member of the Tulane Law School Criminal Defense Clinic. Seann was selected as a Prettyman Fellow at the Georgetown law Center following graduation, where he represented adults in misdemeanor and felony cases, as well as supervised third-year law students in court. Seann recently received his LLM from Georgetown University.

Public Interest in the Private Sector Workshop
Roberta Ritvo

Roberta Ritvo is the pro bono counsel in DLA Piper's Washington, DC office, assisting with regional pro bono programs in Atlanta, Baltimore, Northern Virginia, Raleigh and Tampa and overseeing operations for the Washington, DC office's pro bono efforts. Ms. Ritvo focuses her pro bono practice on immigration, international and election issues. She currently is assisting International Justice Mission in its efforts to develop a land registration system in Rwanda. While earning her J.D. and Master of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Ms. Ritvo completed internships at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Separation of Powers Panel
Chip Roy

Chip Roy served during the 110th Congress as Staff Director and Senior Counsel to U.S. Senator John Cornyn (TX), in his role as Vice Chairman of the Republican Conference. There, he counseled the Senator on matters before Senate leadership and managed Republican Senate floor messaging. Prior to that he served as Senior Counsel and Counsel to Senator Cornyn on the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, where he worked on a wide portfolio of matters - including nominations, intellectual property, civil justice reform, crime, religious liberty, social issues, and immigration, among others. While in law school, Mr. Roy worked on Senator Cornyn's campaign for Senate after having worked as investment banking analyst for NatonsBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Mr. Roy received a B.S. in Commerce from the University of Virginia in 1994, a M.S. in Management Information Systems from the University of Virginia in 1995, and a J.D. from the University of Texas in 2003. He was a member of the UVa golf team and remains an avid golfer. His wife, Carrah, is an attorney with Hogan and Hartson, based in Washington, DC.

Careers in the Federal Government Workshop
Susan Sawtelle

Susan Sawtelle is Managing Associate General Counsel at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Washington, D.C. She oversees GAO's legal advice and opinions provided to the Congress and the Comptroller General of the United States on issues including energy, the environment, the financial markets, aviation, and telecommunications.

Prior to joining GAO in 2001, Susan was a Partner at Wiley, Rein & Fielding in Washington, D.C., specializing in regulatory and litigation matters. On leave of absence from 1999 to 2000, she served at the National Science Foundation's research base at the South Pole in Antarctica, as the Station's Environment, Health, and Safety manager. She was previously a Partner at what is now DLA Piper, and was Special Assistant to the Director of EPA's Office of Solid Waste.

Susan is a 1981 graduate of the Law School, where she was a member of the Law Review. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and in Asian Studies from Connecticut College.

Standing in Environmental Law Panel
Kay Slaughter

Kay Slaughter, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center for over 22 years, has been involved with Virginia issues relating to water resources and land use. She has worked on these topics by advocating within the Virginia General Assembly and before state agencies. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Virginia School of Law, Kay is a former Mayor of the City of Charlottesville. In 2004, she was named Virginia Environmental Leader by a group of business, government and nonprofit environmental professionals in an award presented by the Virginia Military Institute. She currently is working with a coalition of groups to retain the moratorium on uranium mining in Virginia.

Women in Public Interest Legal Careers Workshop
Robin Steinberg

A leader and a pioneer in the field of indigent defense, Robin Steinberg has been a public defender since graduation from New York University School of Law in 1982. Starting as a criminal trial lawyer with the Legal Aid of Society, continuing her career as a founding member and deputy director of The Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, and ultimately creating The Bronx Defenders in 1997, Robin has extensive experience in every aspect of public defense - from representing individual clients to creating a non-profit organization. From 1999 through 2001, she was a participant in the Executive Session on Public Defense, conducted by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and Harvard University.

Today, Robin advocates nationally and internationally for holistic representation and the community defender movement, delivering papers, conducting trainings, and hosting visitors from around the world. She currently serves on the Boards of Directors for the New York State Defender Associations, Roger Williams Law School, and the Journal of Court Innovation, as well as on the New York City Alternative to Incarceration Board and the Center for Court Innovation Internal Review Board. She is a frequent teacher of trial skills to law students and professionals and a panelist and speaker about public defense management and holistic lawyering across the country and around the world.

Public Interest in the Private Sector Workshop
Eddie Summers

Edward Summers is an associate with the law firm of Braverman & Lin and is the primary attorney in the Charlottesville office. His practice is entirely in the field of immigration law and includes applications for nonimmigrant and immigrant visas, humanitarian relief, and removal defense. Edward graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2003, where he was the editor-in-chief of the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology. Edward is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and participates in the Cresciendo Juntos organization in Charlottesville.

Careers in International Public Interest Workshop
Josh Tetrick

Josh, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan law school, has led a United Nations social and environmental program in Kenya, worked for the President of Liberia to attract international investment, taught street children in Nigeria and South Africa, and led a sustainability initiative with a Fortune 500 company. Presently, he is an associate in the Climate Change Practice Group at McGuireWoods LLP.

Colleges and universities frequently invite Josh to speak about how some of the world's biggest needs align with incredible career opportunities for young people to engage their strengths, find meaning -- and make money at the same time.

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Project Innocence Panel
Craig Watkins

Craig Watkins, a Dallas native, was inaugurated on January 1, 2007, as the Criminal District Attorney (DA) for Dallas County, Texas. He is the first African-American elected to that position in Texas. As DA for Dallas County, his SMART ON CRIME philosophy engages innovative strategies throughout the prosecutorial process and seeks to address the root causes of why offenders commit crime. DA Watkins pushed for DNA testing that has identified and freed 19 inmates who had been wrongfully convicted, many of whom had been behind bars for years.

District Attorney Watkins was educated in the Dallas public school system, received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Prairie View A&M University and a Jurist Doctorate degree from Texas Wesleyan University School of Law.

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Status of Forces Agreement Panel
Sean Watts

Professor Watts earned a B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Colorado in 1992, a J.D. from William & Mary School of Law in 1999, and an LL.M. from The Judge Advocate General's School in 2004. During law school, he served as a Notes Editor with the William & Mary Law Review. He most recently taught as an Associate Professor of International Law at The Judge Advocate General's School and has been a Lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law. Professor Watts served as a Judge Advocate General in the United States Army from 1999-2007. He attended law school under the Army's Funded Legal Education Program. Prior to his selection for law school, he served as a Regular Army Armor Officer in in a Tank Battalion.

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Careers in Prosecution and Defense Workshop
Sirena Wissler

Sirena Wissler is an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri (St. Louis) assigned to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Between 1996 and 2003, she served as a Deputy District Attorney for Salt Lake County. Her first assignment was civil litigation, where, among other things, she defended police officers accused of civil rights violations including excessive force. Her last three years in Salt Lake City were spent as member of the Salt Lake District Attorney's Office Organized Gang Prosecution Unit, where she tried a number of high-profile cases including home invasions, aggravated robberies and homicides. She participated in a capital case in which a 23-year-old defendant shot several patrons of a Chevy's restaurant, killing two and wounding three others. He is currently serving life without the possibility of parole. In 1999, Sirena was named Prosecutor of the Year by the Salt Lake Area Fraternal Order of Police.

As an AUSA in Missouri, Sirena has focused on large-scale narcotics investigations, many of which involve complex drug trafficking organizations and Title III wiretaps. In March 2005, she and a colleague convicted a local physician of 176 counts of illegal distribution of controlled substances for issuing some 50,000 illegitimate prescriptions for Vicodin, Xanax, Darvocet and Valium over a two year period. In 2006, she obtained a 324 month sentence for a 27-year-old methamphetamine cook whose 4-week-old infant died after she was exposed to toxic chemicals associated with the manufacture of methamphetamine - the first case of its kind in the District. She is also a member of the Legal Workgroup for the Missouri Juvenile Justice Association's Children in Meth Labs Project.

Sirena's "real job" is being a mom to three children ranging in age from 10 to 4.

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Foreclosure Crisis Panel
Todd Zywicki

Todd J. Zywicki is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, and Senior Fellow of the James Buchanan Center, Program on Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He teaches in the area of Bankruptcy, Contracts, Commercial Law, Business Associations, Law & Economics, and Public Choice and the Law.

Mr. Zywicki has testified several times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show. He is the author of the forthcoming books, Bankruptcy and Personal Responsibility: Bankruptcy Law and Policy in the Twenty-First Century (Yale University Press, Forthcoming 2008) and Public Choice Concepts and Applications in Law (with Maxwell Stearns) (West Publishing, Forthcoming 2009).

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