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.

William Treanor
Georgetown Law School Dean

William M. Treanor is the Executive Vice President of Georgetown University, Dean of the Law Center, and Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair. Treanor joined Georgetown in 2010 and was reappointed to serve a third term as Dean and Executive Vice President on July 1, 2020.

Under Treanor’s leadership, Georgetown Law has hired 75 new faculty members; tripled the number of experiential offerings for students in its clinical, externship, and practicum programs; transformed its law and technology offerings into a world class program with 19 full-time faculty experts and over 80 courses in this area; and experienced its most successful era of fundraising, culminating in nearly $67 million in giving in the last fiscal year.

Treanor has also advanced Georgetown Law’s commitment to affordability and access. During his tenure, Georgetown has more than doubled financial aid; raised nearly $25 million dollars for the Law Center’s scholarship program for exceptional students with significant financial need; and launched the RISE program, which provides academic support for students from historically underrepresented groups. The Law Center also created the Early Outreach Initiative, which brings the Law Center’s dean of admissions, current law students, and alumni together to encourage students in underserved high schools to consider pursuing careers as lawyers.

In keeping with Georgetown Law’s motto, “Law is but the means; justice is the end,” Treanor has focused on increasing opportunities for students to pursue careers in public interest law. He is proud that nearly 1 in 4 graduates move straight into public service jobs – a ratio higher than any other top law school in America. The Law Center supports post-graduate fellowships that have enabled more than 400 graduates to work in public interest jobs, and, in combination with the law firms ArentFox Schiff and DLA Piper, it has launched the D.C. Affordable Law Firm, a “low bono” law firm where recent Georgetown Law graduates provide legal representation to people of limited means.

The National Jurist magazine has named Treanor one of the most influential people in legal education five times. He is a member of the Morristown (N.J.) High School Hall of Fame. In 2020, he was elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for law and education. Most recently, he was selected for the inaugural Honorable Robert A. Katzmann Award for Academic Excellence by the Burton Awards. He is Vice Chair of the Board of St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark, NJ and formerly a board member of Equal Justice Works.

Treanor’s areas of academic expertise include constitutional law, property law, criminal law, intellectual property, and legal history. At Georgetown Law, he has taught a first-year legal justice seminar, an upper-level course on the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, and leadership courses. His writings have principally been in the area of constitutional history, and he has been recognized as one of the 10 most-cited legal history scholars in the United States by the University of Chicago Law School’s Brian Leiter. His early work largely focused on the history of constitutional protections of private property. His article “The Original Understanding of the Takings Clause and the Political Process,” 95 Colum. L. Rev. 782 (1995), was recognized by the Land Use Professors Blog as the most cited land use article of the past 30 years. Treanor’s article, “Judicial Review before Marbury” was cited in the Moore v. Harper (2023) majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts. His recent article, “The Case of the Dishonest Scrivener: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of the Federalist Constitution,” examined the changes that Gouverneur Morris and the Committee of Style made in preparing the Constitution’s final draft. W.W. Norton will publish his upcoming book, Fathers of the Constitution: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Creation of the American Republic.

Before coming to Georgetown, Treanor was Dean and Paul Fuller Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He also served in a variety of positions in the government, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice; Associate Counsel, Office of Independent Counsel during the Iran/Contra investigation. He was law clerk to the Honorable James L. Oakes, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Treanor has a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale College.

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.