Neal Katyal
Supreme Court Advocate and former Deputy Solicitor General of the United States

Neal Katyal, the Paul Saunders Professor at Georgetown University and the former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, focuses on Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, and Intellectual Property. He is a best selling New York Times author, and has spent the last three years serving as Special Prosecutor for the State of Minnesota in the murder of George Floyd. In December 2017, American Lawyer magazine named him The Litigator of the Year; he was chosen from all the lawyers in the United States. He was named Litigator of the Year by American Lawyer once again in 2023. At the age of 54, he has also already argued more Supreme Court cases in U.S. history than has any minority attorney, recently breaking the record held by Thurgood Marshall. He has argued 51 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Neal has extensive experience in matters of constitutional, technology, corporate, patent, securities, criminal, employment, and tribal law. In the most recent 2022-23 term alone, Neal is arguing five separate cases at the Supreme Court – nearly 10% of the docket. Neal has argued major Supreme Court cases involving a variety of issues, such as his successful defense of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, his victorious defense of former Attorney General John Ashcroft for alleged abuses in the war on terror, his unanimous victory against 8 states who sued the nation’s leading power plants for contributing to global warming, his attack on Donald Trump’s “travel ban,” and a variety of other matters. As Acting Solicitor General, Katyal was responsible for representing the federal government of the United States in all appellate matters before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeals throughout the nation. Neal was also the only head of the Solicitor General’s office to argue a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, on the important question of whether certain aspects of the human genome were patentable.

While teaching at Georgetown, Katyal won Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in the United States Supreme Court, a case that challenged the policy of military trials at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba. The Supreme Court sided with him by a 5-3 vote, finding that President Bush’s tribunals violated the constitutional separation of powers, domestic military law, and international law. As former Solicitor General and Duke law professor Walter Dellinger put it “Hamdan is simply the most important decision on presidential power and the rule of law ever. Ever.” An expert in matters of constitutional law, Katyal has embraced his theoretical work as the platform for practical consequences in the federal courts. He has also served as a visiting professor at both Harvard and Yale law schools.

Katyal previously served as National Security Adviser in the U.S. Justice Department and was commissioned by President Clinton to write a report on the need for more legal pro bono work. He also served as Vice President Al Gore’s co-counsel in the Supreme Court election dispute of 2000, and represented the Deans of most major private law schools in the landmark University of Michigan affirmative-action case Grutter v. Bollinger (2003). Katyal clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer as well as Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals. He attended Dartmouth College and Yale Law School. His Articles have appeared in virtually every major law review and newspaper in America, including several articles in Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal.

Neal is the recipient of the very highest award given to a civilian by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Edmund Randolph Award, which the Attorney General presented to him in 2011. The Chief Justice of the United States appointed him in 2011 (and again in 2014) to the Advisory Committee on Federal Appellate Rules. Among other honors, Neal was named one of the top 200 lawyers in the United States by Forbes Magazine (in 2024); named as one of the 500 Leading Lawyers by LawDragon Magazine (one of 4 lawyers so named for every single year since 2005 to 2024); one of the 500 Most Influential People in Washington DC by Washingtonian Magazine (2022); Appellate MVP by Law360 numerous times; winner of Financial Times Innovative Lawyer Award in two different categories (both private and public law) (2017 and again in 2023), one of GQ’s Men of the Year (2017), 40 Most Influential Lawyers of the Last Decade Nationwide by National Law Journal (2010), and 90 Greatest Washington Lawyers Over the Last 30 Years by Legal Times (2008). Neal also won the National Law Journal’s pro bono award in 2004. He has appeared on virtually every major American news program, as well as on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. He has also performed on Netflix’s House of Cards and Showtime’s Billions (where he played himself in both series). In 2021, Neal was named a Trustee of Dartmouth College. In 2022, he was named a Trustee of the Whitney Museum in New York City.

Tiffany Graham
Constitutional Law Scholar and Touro University Law Professor

Tiffany C. Graham joined the faculty at Touro Law Center in Long Island, New York in May 2020. She serves as Associate Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Campus Engagement. Professor Graham primarily teaches in the areas of constitutional law and race and the law, but has also taught criminal procedure, law and sexuality, and torts.

As Associate Dean for Campus Engagement, she is responsible for ensuring a culture of respect and opportunity where every individual – students, faculty and staff – feels welcome and can thrive. Associate Dean Graham designs, implements, and assesses policies that promote fairness, accessibility, and connectivity consistent with Touro University’s mission, values, accreditation standards, and legal requirements.

Professor Graham joined Touro Law after serving for six years on the faculty and as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the University of South Dakota School of Law. She has written and spoken nationally on topics broadly related to LGBTQ+ equality, including marriage equality, LGBTQ+ youth homelessness, conversion therapy, and the integration of LGBTQ+ communities in rural spaces. Her work has appeared in multiple journals, most recently in the Creighton Law Review and the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review, and has been cited at various stages of appellate litigation.

In addition to her scholarly work, Professor Graham is active in the professional community, where she recently served as the Chair of the South Dakota State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and has now been appointed to the corresponding New York State Advisory Committee. She has also served on various boards of directors and fulfilled an appointment to the Magistrate Judge Selection Panel for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

A graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges and the University of Virginia School of Law, she previously clerked for the Honorable Richard W. Roberts on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and did commercial litigation in the Los Angeles office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver and Hedges, LLP. Professor Graham was named a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in 2014.

Joan Biskupic
Chief Supreme Court Analyst, CNN

Joan Biskupic, CNN’s Chief Supreme Court analyst, has covered the Supreme Court for more than twenty-five years and has written several books on the judiciary. She is the author of the recently published Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to the Right and its Historic Consequences.

She is also the author of a biography of Chief Justice John Roberts (The Chief, spring 2019). Her previous books include Sandra Day O’Connor (2005), American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (2009) and Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice (2014).

Biskupic previously was an editor-in-charge for Legal Affairs at Reuters and, earlier, Supreme Court correspondent for the Washington Post and for USA Today. A graduate of Georgetown University law school, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism in 2015.

Noel Francisco
Former Solicitor General of the United States

Noel Francisco served as the 47th Solicitor General of the United States, from 2017 to 2020. He represents clients in a broad array of civil and criminal litigation, challenges to federal and state laws and regulations, and government investigations and enforcement actions. The matters he handles often have significant public policy implications, including in the areas of global climate change, opioids, asbestos, tobacco, firearms, health care, administrative law, free speech, religious liberty, and separation of powers.

Noel has argued some of the most important cases the Supreme Court has heard in recent years. For example, he argued Trump v. Hawaii, where he successfully defended the president’s orders restricting travel from countries deemed to present security risks; Janus v. AFSCME, which upheld the First Amendment rights of public employees who decline to join labor unions; Kisor v. Wilkie, which adopted his argument that the “Auer deference doctrine” should be significantly curtailed but retained in its core applications; Apple Inc. v. Pepper, which addressed whether Apple’s App Store customers had standing to sue the company for antitrust violations; Knick v. Township of Scott, which held that property owners could sue state and local governments in federal court to vindicate Fifth Amendment takings claims; Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, which invalidated restrictions on the president’s authority to remove the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; McDonnell v. United States, which reversed the federal bribery conviction of the governor of Virginia; NLRB v. Noel Canning, which limited the president’s constitutional recess appointments power; and Zubik v. Burwell, which challenged federal insurance coverage regulations that violated Catholic organizations’ religious beliefs.

Mark Joseph Stern
Senior Writer, Slate

Mark Joseph Stern is a senior writer covering courts and the law for Slate and co-host of the Amicus podcast. Based in Washington, DC, he has covered the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate and district courts, and state and local courts since 2013. He holds a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center and is a member of the Maryland Bar.