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Symposium
Alan E. Brownstein, Professor of Law
Boochever and Bird Endowed Chair of the Teaching of Freedom and Equality, UC Davis School of Law
Professor Brownstein's primary focus of scholarship relates to church-state issues and free exercise and establishment clause doctrine, he has also written extensively on freedom of speech, privacy and autonomy rights, and other constitutional law subjects. He is the editor of, The Establishment of Religion Clause: Its Constitutional History and the Contemporary Debate, the first volume of a series of anthologies on the Bill of Rights published by Prometheus Books. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Antioch College.
Michael Kent Curtis, Professor of Law
Wake Forest School of Law
Michael Kent Curtis is a graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School and one of the foremost constitutional historians in the United States. He is an award winning author of such books as "Free Speech: The People's Darling Privilege: Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History” and “No State Shall Abridge: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights.” Professor Curtis has also received the Frank Porter Graham Award from the North Carolina Civil Liberties Union for achievement in defending and advancing civil liberties in North Carolina.
Brannon P. Denning, Associate Professor of Law
Cumberland School of Law, Samford University
Brannon P. Denning is a constitutional law scholar having written extensively on the Commerce Clause, the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine, the constitutional amending process, the confirmation process, the Second Amendment, and on foreign affairs matters. He has also collaborated with Yale law professor Boris I. Bittker on a treatise on the Commerce Clause and is co-editor of a one-of-a-kind coursebook on gun control and gun rights. Professor Denning is currently an Associate Professor of Law at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama.
Beth Hillman, Professor of Law
UC Hastings College of the Law
Elizabeth Hillman's scholarship focuses on American military law and history since the mid-20th century. She attended Duke University on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, received a degree in electrical engineering and later she earned a Ph.D. in history at Yale University, and a J.D. at Yale Law School. She received a 2005 Human Dignity Award for creating a program that sends law students into Camden high schools to teach about the Constitution and civil rights. She is a board member of the National Institute for Military Justice and an elected member of the American Law Institute. Professor Hillman is the author of Defending America: Military Culture and the Cold War Court-Martial (Princeton University Press, 2005) and co-author of Military Justice: Cases and Materials (with Eugene R. Fidell and Dwight H. Sullivan, LexisNexis, 2007).
Nicholas Johnson, Professor of Law
Fordham Law School
Nicholas Johnson has published extensively in the area of gun control/gun rights through his career. He is a professor of contracts, environmental law and gun control/gun rights. Professor Johnson received his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is the author of such publications as Self Defense? George Mason L. Rev. (2006); A Second Amendment Moment: The Constitutional Politics of Gun Rights, 71 Brooklyn L. Rev. 715- 796 (2005); Beyond the Second Amendment: An Individual Right to Arms Viewed Through the Ninth Amendment. 24 Rutgers Law Journal 1-81 (1993); and Testing The States' Rights Second Amendment for Content: A Showdown Between Federal Environmental Closure of Firing Ranges and Protective State Legislation, 38 Indiana L. Rev. 689-726 (2004).
Don B. Kates Jr., Retired Professor of Law and Criminologist
Don B. Kates, Jr. is a retired American professor of constitutional and criminal law, and a criminologist associated with the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco, California. He participated in the Heller litigation both in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. Professor Kates received his J.D. from Yale University Law School. As a civil liberties lawyer he has represented gun owners attacking the constitutionality of certain firearms laws. His books include Armed: New Perspectives On Gun Control (Prometheus, 2001), Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out (North River Press, 1979), Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy (Ballinger Pub. Co., 1984), and The Great American Gun Debate: Essays on Firearms and Violence (Pacific Research Institute, 1997). Additionally, he has published leading articles in both criminology and law journals including the Michigan Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, and Law & Contemporary Problems.
Carlton F.W. Larson, Acting Professor of Law
UC Davis School of Law
Carlton Larson's research interests focus on constitutional law and legal history, with a strong emphasis on the eighteenth century. He received his law degree from Yale Law School. Prior to joining the UC Davis faculty, Professor Larson spent three years in private practice and served as a law clerk to Judge Michael Daly Hawkins of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His scholarly work includes, The Forgotten Constitutional Law of Treason and the Enemy Combatant Problem, 154 U. Pa. L. Rev. 863 (2006); The Declaration of Independence: A 225th Anniversary Re-Interpretation, 76 Wash. L. Rev. 701 (2001); and The Revolutionary American Jury: A Case Study of the 1778-1779 Philadelphia Treason Trials, (forthcoming SMU L. Rev.).
Craig Lerner, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law
George Mason University School of Law
Craig Lerner is a professor of Business Associations, Criminal Procedure, and Conflicts of Laws. He received his A.B. and J.D. from Harvard and his M.A. from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He served as an associate independent counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel (Whitewater Investigation). He also has clerked for the Honorable James L. Buckley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and worked as an associate at Cooper, Carvin, & Rosenthal and Wiley, Rein, & Fielding in Washington, D.C. His scholarly works include Saving the Constitution: Lincoln, Secession and the Price of Union, 102 Michigan Law Review 1263 (2004) (review of Daniel Farber, Lincoln’s Constitution); Legislators as the “American Criminal Class”: Why Congress (Sometimes) Protects the Rights of Defendants, 2004 University of Illinois Law Review 599 (2004); and Reasonable Suspicion and Mere Hunches, 59 Vanderbilt Law Review 407 (2006).
Sanford V. Levinson, W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law and Professor of Government
University of Texas School of Law
Sanford Levinson, who holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, joined the University of Texas Law School in 1980. He is currently a visiting professor at Harvard School of Law. He holds a J.D. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from Harvard. He is the author of over 250 articles and book reviews in professional and popular journals, Levinson is also the author of four books: Constitutional Faith (1988, winner of the Scribes Award); Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (1998); Wrestling With Diversity (2003); and, most recently, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It)(2006). His edited or co-edited books include a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (5th ed. 2006, with Paul Brest, Jack Balkin, Akhil Amar, and Reva Siegel); Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment (1995); Legal Canons (2000, with Jack Balkin). He is also a regular participant on the popular blog, Balkinization. A member of the American Law Institute, Levinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001
Rory Little, Professor of Law
UC Hastings College of the Law
Rory Little teaches and publishes extensively in the areas of criminal law and procedure, and legal ethics. Professor Little graduated Yale Law School in 1982. Professor Little previously served as a law clerk at the federal district, Circuit, and Supreme Court levels for Judge Louis Oberdorfer, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, Justice William J. Brennan Jr, and worked part-time for Justices Powell, Stevens, and Chief Justice Burger. Professor Little served as an Associate Deputy Attorney General to Attorney Janet Reno in the United States Department of Justice, where he managed complex civil, criminal, and ethics issues. He was also Chief of the Appellate Section in the U.S. Attorney's office for the Northern District of California. Professor Little serves on the ABA's Standing committee on Criminal Justice Standards, and previously served on the ABA's Standing Committee on Legal Ethics (1995-98).
Calvin Massey, Professor of Law
UC Hastings College of the Law
Professor Massey is a product of small towns in the mountains of the American West. He is a graduate of Whitman College, Harvard Business School, and Columbia Law School, and practiced law in San Francisco for a dozen years before joining the Hastings faculty in 1987. Among his books are American Constitutional Law: Powers and Liberties and Silent Rights: The Ninth Amendment and the Constitution's Unenumerated Rights. He has also authored some 50 articles, most of which involve matters of constitutional law. Professor Massey teaches Constitutional Law, Property, Trusts and Estates, and Corporations. Professor Massey has been a visiting professor at the law schools of Stanford, Boalt Hall, Boston College, Boston University, Lewis & Clark, Washington & Lee, and Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Speakers’ Biographies
The Second Amendment After Heller
Featured Presenters
Alan E. Brownstein, Professor of Law
Boochever and Bird Endowed Chair of the Teaching of Freedom and Equality, UC Davis School of Law
Professor Brownstein's primary focus of scholarship relates to church-state issues and free exercise and establishment clause doctrine, he has also written extensively on freedom of speech, privacy and autonomy rights, and other constitutional law subjects. He is the editor of, The Establishment of Religion Clause: Its Constitutional History and the Contemporary Debate, the first volume of a series of anthologies on the Bill of Rights published by Prometheus Books. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Antioch College.
Michael Kent Curtis, Professor of Law
Wake Forest School of Law
Michael Kent Curtis is a graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School and one of the foremost constitutional historians in the United States. He is an award winning author of such books as "Free Speech: The People's Darling Privilege: Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History” and “No State Shall Abridge: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights.” Professor Curtis has also received the Frank Porter Graham Award from the North Carolina Civil Liberties Union for achievement in defending and advancing civil liberties in North Carolina.
Brannon P. Denning, Associate Professor of Law
Cumberland School of Law, Samford University
Brannon P. Denning is a constitutional law scholar having written extensively on the Commerce Clause, the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine, the constitutional amending process, the confirmation process, the Second Amendment, and on foreign affairs matters. He has also collaborated with Yale law professor Boris I. Bittker on a treatise on the Commerce Clause and is co-editor of a one-of-a-kind coursebook on gun control and gun rights. Professor Denning is currently an Associate Professor of Law at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama.
Beth Hillman, Professor of Law
UC Hastings College of the Law
Elizabeth Hillman's scholarship focuses on American military law and history since the mid-20th century. She attended Duke University on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, received a degree in electrical engineering and later she earned a Ph.D. in history at Yale University, and a J.D. at Yale Law School. She received a 2005 Human Dignity Award for creating a program that sends law students into Camden high schools to teach about the Constitution and civil rights. She is a board member of the National Institute for Military Justice and an elected member of the American Law Institute. Professor Hillman is the author of Defending America: Military Culture and the Cold War Court-Martial (Princeton University Press, 2005) and co-author of Military Justice: Cases and Materials (with Eugene R. Fidell and Dwight H. Sullivan, LexisNexis, 2007).
Nicholas Johnson, Professor of Law
Fordham Law School
Nicholas Johnson has published extensively in the area of gun control/gun rights through his career. He is a professor of contracts, environmental law and gun control/gun rights. Professor Johnson received his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is the author of such publications as Self Defense? George Mason L. Rev. (2006); A Second Amendment Moment: The Constitutional Politics of Gun Rights, 71 Brooklyn L. Rev. 715- 796 (2005); Beyond the Second Amendment: An Individual Right to Arms Viewed Through the Ninth Amendment. 24 Rutgers Law Journal 1-81 (1993); and Testing The States' Rights Second Amendment for Content: A Showdown Between Federal Environmental Closure of Firing Ranges and Protective State Legislation, 38 Indiana L. Rev. 689-726 (2004).
Don B. Kates Jr., Retired Professor of Law and Criminologist
Don B. Kates, Jr. is a retired American professor of constitutional and criminal law, and a criminologist associated with the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco, California. He participated in the Heller litigation both in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. Professor Kates received his J.D. from Yale University Law School. As a civil liberties lawyer he has represented gun owners attacking the constitutionality of certain firearms laws. His books include Armed: New Perspectives On Gun Control (Prometheus, 2001), Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out (North River Press, 1979), Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy (Ballinger Pub. Co., 1984), and The Great American Gun Debate: Essays on Firearms and Violence (Pacific Research Institute, 1997). Additionally, he has published leading articles in both criminology and law journals including the Michigan Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, and Law & Contemporary Problems.
Carlton F.W. Larson, Acting Professor of Law
UC Davis School of Law
Carlton Larson's research interests focus on constitutional law and legal history, with a strong emphasis on the eighteenth century. He received his law degree from Yale Law School. Prior to joining the UC Davis faculty, Professor Larson spent three years in private practice and served as a law clerk to Judge Michael Daly Hawkins of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His scholarly work includes, The Forgotten Constitutional Law of Treason and the Enemy Combatant Problem, 154 U. Pa. L. Rev. 863 (2006); The Declaration of Independence: A 225th Anniversary Re-Interpretation, 76 Wash. L. Rev. 701 (2001); and The Revolutionary American Jury: A Case Study of the 1778-1779 Philadelphia Treason Trials, (forthcoming SMU L. Rev.).
Craig Lerner, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law
George Mason University School of Law
Craig Lerner is a professor of Business Associations, Criminal Procedure, and Conflicts of Laws. He received his A.B. and J.D. from Harvard and his M.A. from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He served as an associate independent counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel (Whitewater Investigation). He also has clerked for the Honorable James L. Buckley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and worked as an associate at Cooper, Carvin, & Rosenthal and Wiley, Rein, & Fielding in Washington, D.C. His scholarly works include Saving the Constitution: Lincoln, Secession and the Price of Union, 102 Michigan Law Review 1263 (2004) (review of Daniel Farber, Lincoln’s Constitution); Legislators as the “American Criminal Class”: Why Congress (Sometimes) Protects the Rights of Defendants, 2004 University of Illinois Law Review 599 (2004); and Reasonable Suspicion and Mere Hunches, 59 Vanderbilt Law Review 407 (2006).
Sanford V. Levinson, W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law and Professor of Government
University of Texas School of Law
Sanford Levinson, who holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, joined the University of Texas Law School in 1980. He is currently a visiting professor at Harvard School of Law. He holds a J.D. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from Harvard. He is the author of over 250 articles and book reviews in professional and popular journals, Levinson is also the author of four books: Constitutional Faith (1988, winner of the Scribes Award); Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (1998); Wrestling With Diversity (2003); and, most recently, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It)(2006). His edited or co-edited books include a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (5th ed. 2006, with Paul Brest, Jack Balkin, Akhil Amar, and Reva Siegel); Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment (1995); Legal Canons (2000, with Jack Balkin). He is also a regular participant on the popular blog, Balkinization. A member of the American Law Institute, Levinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001
Rory Little, Professor of Law
UC Hastings College of the Law
Rory Little teaches and publishes extensively in the areas of criminal law and procedure, and legal ethics. Professor Little graduated Yale Law School in 1982. Professor Little previously served as a law clerk at the federal district, Circuit, and Supreme Court levels for Judge Louis Oberdorfer, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, Justice William J. Brennan Jr, and worked part-time for Justices Powell, Stevens, and Chief Justice Burger. Professor Little served as an Associate Deputy Attorney General to Attorney Janet Reno in the United States Department of Justice, where he managed complex civil, criminal, and ethics issues. He was also Chief of the Appellate Section in the U.S. Attorney's office for the Northern District of California. Professor Little serves on the ABA's Standing committee on Criminal Justice Standards, and previously served on the ABA's Standing Committee on Legal Ethics (1995-98).
Calvin Massey, Professor of Law
UC Hastings College of the Law
Professor Massey is a product of small towns in the mountains of the American West. He is a graduate of Whitman College, Harvard Business School, and Columbia Law School, and practiced law in San Francisco for a dozen years before joining the Hastings faculty in 1987. Among his books are American Constitutional Law: Powers and Liberties and Silent Rights: The Ninth Amendment and the Constitution's Unenumerated Rights. He has also authored some 50 articles, most of which involve matters of constitutional law. Professor Massey teaches Constitutional Law, Property, Trusts and Estates, and Corporations. Professor Massey has been a visiting professor at the law schools of Stanford, Boalt Hall, Boston College, Boston University, Lewis & Clark, Washington & Lee, and Leiden University in the Netherlands.