The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies (FedSoc) is an American conservative and libertarian legal organization that advocates for a textualist and originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has chapters at more than 200 law schools and features student, lawyer, and faculty divisions; the lawyers division comprises more than 70,000 practicing attorneys in ninety cities. Through speaking events, lectures, and other activities, it provides a forum for legal experts of opposing views to interact with members of the legal profession, the judiciary, and the legal academy. It is one of the most influential legal organizations in the United States.
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries. Cato was established to focus on public advocacy, media exposure and societal influence.
Columbia Law School (CLS) is the law school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university in New York City. It was founded in 1858 as the Columbia College Law School, and was known for its legal scholarship dating back to the 18th century. Graduates of the university's colonial predecessor, King's College, include such notable early-American legal figures as John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, and Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, who were co-authors of The Federalist Papers. Since 2014, the law school has been ranked No. 1 on the National Law Journal's "Go-To Law Schools" ranking, which measures the percentage of graduates securing employment at the largest 100 law firms in the U.S.
Cornell Law School is the law school of Cornell University, a private Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York. One of the five Ivy League law schools, it offers four law degree programs, JD, LLM, MSLS and JSD, along with several dual-degree programs in conjunction with other professional schools at the university. Established in 1887 as Cornell's Department of Law, the school today is one of the smallest top-tier JD-conferring institutions in the country, with around 200 students graduating each year.
The Georgetown University Law Center is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment and the most applied to, receiving more full-time applications than any other law school in the country.
Tom Gordon Palmer is an American libertarian author and theorist, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and Vice President for International Programs at the Atlas Network.
The Antonin Scalia Law School is the law school of George Mason University, a public research university in Virginia. It is located in Arlington, Virginia, roughly 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Washington, D.C., and 15 miles (24 km) east-northeast of George Mason University's main campus in Fairfax, Virginia.
Paul Drew Clement is an American lawyer who served as U.S. Solicitor General from 2004 to 2008 and is known for his advocacy before the U.S. Supreme Court. He established his own law firm, Clement & Murphy, in 2022 after leaving Kirkland & Ellis, following that firm’s decision to end its Second Amendment work. He is also a Distinguished Lecturer in Law at Georgetown University and an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law. He was nominated by President George W. Bush on March 14, 2005, for the post of Solicitor General, confirmed by the United States Senate on June 8, 2005, and took the oath of office on June 13.
Case Western Reserve University School of Law is one of eight schools at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. It was one of the first schools accredited by the American Bar Association. It is a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). It was initially named for Franklin Thomas Backus, a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, whose widow donated $50,000 to found the school in 1892.
Neal Kumar Katyal is an American corporate lawyer and academic. He is a partner at Hogan Lovells and the Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University Law Center. During the Obama administration, Katyal served as Acting Solicitor General of the United States from May 2010 until June 2011. Previously, Katyal served as an attorney in the Solicitor General's office, and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the U.S. Justice Department.
Thomas Michael Hardiman is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Nominated by US President George W. Bush, he began active service on April 2, 2007. He maintains chambers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and was previously a United States district judge.
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. It ruled that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms—unconnected with service in a militia—for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense within the home, and that the District of Columbia's handgun ban and requirement that lawfully owned rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" violated this guarantee. It also stated that the right to bear arms is not unlimited and that certain restrictions on guns and gun ownership were permissible. It was the first Supreme Court case to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense or whether the right was only intended for state militias.
William H. "Chip" Mellor is the chairman of the board of directors for the Institute for Justice and its former founder, President, and General Counsel. During his career as the Institute's General Counsel, Mellor pursued constitutional litigation in four areas: economic liberty, property rights, school choice, and free speech.
Alan Gura is an American litigator practicing in the areas of civil litigation, appellate litigation, and civil rights law at Gura P.L.L.C. Gura successfully argued two landmark constitutional cases before the United States Supreme Court involving firearms, District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago.
CDA Investment Technologies was a Maryland-based financial research firm founded by Robert A. Levy. It was a pioneer in early financial databases, but was best known for its mutual fund rankings, whose quarterly release would attract national attention in the 1980s and 1990s. After being bought by the Thomson Corporation in 1987, it was an independent subsidiary until 1998, when it was blended in with Technimetrics to become Thomson Financial Investor Relations.
The William & Mary Law School, formally known as the Marshall-Wythe School of Law, is the law school of the College of William & Mary, a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. It is the oldest extant law school in the United States, having been founded in 1779 at the urging of alumnus Thomas Jefferson. It has an enrollment of 606 full-time students seeking a Juris Doctor (J.D.) or a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in the American Legal System, a two or three semester program for lawyers trained outside the United States.
David G. Post is an American legal scholar. Post is an expert in intellectual property law and cyberspace law. Until his retirement in 2014, Post served as Professor of Law at Beasley School of Law of Temple University in Philadelphia.
Stephen P. Halbrook is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and an author and lawyer known for his litigation on cases involving laws pertaining to firearms. He has written extensively about the original meanings of the Second Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment. He has argued and won three cases before the US Supreme Court: Printz v. United States, United States v. Thompson-Center Arms Company, and Castillo v. United States. He has also written briefs in many other cases, including the Supreme Court cases Small v. United States and McDonald v. Chicago. In District of Columbia v. Heller, he wrote a brief on behalf of the majority of both houses of Congress. He has written many books and articles on the topic of gun control, some of which have been cited in Supreme Court opinions. He has testified before congress on multiple occasions. Halbrook's most popular book is That Every Man Be Armed, originally published in 1986. The book is an analysis of the legal history and original intent of the Second Amendment.
Deepak Gupta is an American attorney known for representing consumers, workers, and a broad range of clients in Supreme Court and appellate cases and constitutional, class action, and complex litigation. Gupta is the founding principal of the law firm Gupta Wessler LLP and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, where he is an instructor in the Harvard Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.
Joshua Michael Blackman is an American lawyer who is employed as an associate professor of law at the South Texas College of Law where he focuses on constitutional law and the intersection of law and technology. He has authored three books.
