The Catholic University of America

Keynote Speaker

  • Philip Hamburger is Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He holds a B.A. degree from Princeton University and a J.D. degree from Yale Law School. His scholarship focuses on constitutional law and its history as well as the law of the First Amendment. Prior to joining the Columbia Law School faculty he held a chaired professorship at the University of Chicago Law School and before that served on the law faculties of George Washington University and the University of Connecticut Law School. Before beginning his academic career, he was briefly in private law practice. His recent book, Law and Judicial Duty, received The Intercollegiate Studies Institute's 2009 Paolucci/Bagehot Book Award. His work has been published in such leading journals as the Columbia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Texas Law Review and the Supreme Court Review. In addition to Law and Judicial Duty, he is the author of the book, Separation of Church and State (Harvard University, 2002).

Speakers

  • Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. He is also the Peter and Kirsten Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a visiting professor at New York University, whose faculty he shall join in July 2010. He earned his A.B. degree from Columbia College, B.A. degree from the University of Oxford, and LL.B. degree from Yale University. His wide-ranging teaching areas include constitutional law, administrative law, antitrust, contracts, corporations, employment discrimination, environmental law, health law and policy, legal history, labor law, property, jurisprudence, land use planning, patents, taxation, and torts. His principal areas of scholarly writing include the economic analysis of law, property and tort law, and legal philosophy. He has served extended periods of service as editor of both the Journal of Legal Studies and of the Journal of Law and Economics. He is currently a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics. His recent books include Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection of Property Rights (Oxford, 2008); Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (Yale University Press, 2006); and Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (University of Chicago, 2003).

  • Emilio M. Garza is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Notre Dame, and his J.D. degree from the University of Texas Law School. He served in the United States Marine Corps prior to studying law, and he practiced law with a San Antonio, Texas, law firm before embarking on a judicial career. He was appointed by William P. Clements, the then governor of Texas, to the 225th District Court. He was appointed then by President Ronald Reagan to the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. He was subsequently appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He has been mentioned as a possible candidate for appointment to the United States Supreme Court.

  • R.H. Helmholz is the Ruth Wyatt Rosenson Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. He received his A.B. from Princeton University, his M.A. and Ph.D. in medieval history from the University of California Berkeley, and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School. His principal research interests have been in legal history, in which one of his efforts has been to show the relevance of the Roman and canon laws to the development of the common law. He has served as Arthur Goodhart Professor of Law in Cambridge University and has published several books, beginning with Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge University Press, 1974), and most recently The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s (Oxford University Press, 2004).

  • H. Jefferson Powell is the Frederic Cleaveland Professor of Law and Divinity at Duke University where he holds a joint appointment in the law and divinity schools. He earned his B.A. degree from the University of Wales, A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Christian theology from Duke University, and M.Div. and J.D. from Yale University. He teaches constitutional law and contracts, as well as courses on the relationship between theology and law. His interests include the constitutional law governing foreign affairs and the role of moral and political commitments in constitutional decision making. He has served as a United States deputy assistant attorney general and as principal deputy solicitor general in the U.S. Department of Justice. He is a prolific scholar, whose recent books include Constitutional Conscience: The Moral Dimension of Judicial Decision (University of Chicago, 2008) and A Community Built on Words: The Constitution in History and Politics (University of Chicago, rev ed. 2005).

  • Lloyd L. Weinreb is Dane Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He has B.A. degrees from Dartmouth College and Oxford University and an LL. B. degree from Harvard Law School. Before he began teaching in 1965, he served as law clerk for Justice John M. Harlan and as an attorney in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. He has taught and written in the areas of criminal law and procedure, intellectual property, and legal and political philosophy. Representative publications include Natural Law and Justice (Harvard University Press, 1987), Oedipus at Fenway Park: What Rights Are and Why There Are Any (Harvard University Press, 1994), and Legal Reason: The Use of Analogy in Legal Argument (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  • Michael P. Zuckert is Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor at the University of Notre Dame. He earned his B.A. from Cornell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. His teaching areas include early modern political theory, Locke, American political thought and constitutional law. His research and writing are in political philosophy, American constitutional law and theory, and American political thought. He has taught at Carleton College, Cornell University, Claremont Men's College, Fordham University, the University of Minnesota and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. His books include Launching Liberalism: John Locke and the Liberal Tradition (University of Kansas Press, 2002), Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton University Press, 1994), The Natural Rights Republic (University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), and The Truth About Leo Strauss (University of Chicago Press, 2006). He is currently completing a book called Natural Rights and American Constitutionalism.