Pepperdine Law Review Symposium 2025

Martin Lederman

Martin Lederman is a Professor from Practice at the Georgetown University Law Center. Lederman was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010, and an Attorney Advisor in OLC from 1994-2002. From 1988 to 2004, he was an attorney at Bredhoff & Kaiser, where his practice consisted principally of federal litigation, including appeals, on behalf of labor unions, employees and pension funds. In 2008, with David Barron, he published a two-part article in the Harvard Law Review examining Congress’s authority to regulate the Commander in Chief’s conduct of war.

Daniel Farber

Daniel Farber is the Sho Sato Professor of Law and Faculty Director for the Center of Law, Energy, and the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Farber is a graduate of the University of Illinois, where he earned his B.A., M.A., and J.D. degrees. He graduated, summa cum laude, from the College of Law, where he was the class valedictorian and served as editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois Law Review. 

Blake Emerson

Blake Emerson is a Professor of Law and a Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at the University of California, Los Angeles, Law School. Emerson’s primary interests lie in administrative law, structural constitutional law, and political theory. In 2021, Emerson received the Association of American Law Schools, Administrative Law Section’s Emerging Scholar Award. In spring of 2024, Emerson was a Visiting Professor Law at Yale Law School.

Barry P. McDonald (Moderator)

Barry P. McDonald is a Professor of Law at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law. Professor McDonald teaches courses in constitutional Law, First Amendment law, comparative constitutional law, intellectual property law and contracts law. He is a recognized expert on constitutional law and the U.S. Supreme Court, and is frequently interviewed or writes in such major media outlets as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The CBS Evening News, CNN, Fox News, National Public Radio, and The Los Angeles Times. He is also a recognized scholar in the area of constitutional law and First Amendment law. Since joining the Pepperdine faculty in 2000, he has published numerous articles and essays in such prominent journals as the Emory Law Journal, Illinois Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, and Washington & Lee Law Review.

Amanda Frost

Amanda Frost is the David Lurton Massee, Jr., Professor of Law, the John A. Ewald, Jr., Research Professor of Law, and the Director of the Immigration, Migration, and Human Rights Program at the University of Virginia School of Law. Frost’s scholarship and teaching focuses on immigration and citizenship law, federal courts and jurisdiction, and judicial ethics. She has been cited by over a dozen federal and state courts and has been invited to testify before both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Her non-academic writing has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, and she authors the “Academic Round-up” column for SCOTUSblog. In 2019, Frost was awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for her book, You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers (2021), which was named as a “New & Noteworthy” book by The New York Times Book Review and was shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize. 

Vikram Amar

Vikram Amar is a Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Davis. Before returning to UC Davis, where he had been a professor and the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at King Hall, Amar served as the Dean and the Iwan Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign College of Law. Amar earned his bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and his juris doctor from Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor for the Yale Law Journal. After his time at Yale Law School, Amar clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Mary S. Hoopes (Moderator)

Mary S. Hoopes is an Associate Professor of Law at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law. Professor Hoopes’s research examines how legal and political institutions serve marginalized populations, with a focus on noncitizens. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Law & Social Inquiry, the Berkeley Journal of International Law, the Hastings Law Journal, and Cambridge University Press. At Pepperdine, Professor Hoopes teaches administrative law, remedies, and ethical lawyering. She also co-directs the Wm. Matthew Byrne, Jr. Judicial Clerkship Institute. Professor Hoopes joined the Pepperdine law faculty in 2022 from the UC Berkeley School of Law, where she was the Director of Research at the Berkeley Judicial Institute. She previously served as a United States Supreme Court Fellow at the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C. Prior to the fellowship, she clerked for the Honorable John T. Noonan of the Ninth Circuit, and was a litigation associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP. Professor Hoopes earned a Ph.D. from the Jurisprudence and Social Policy program at UC Berkeley, and graduated magna cum laude from Cornell Law School, where she was an editor of the Cornell Law Review. She earned her Bachelor of Science magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame.

Trevor Morrison

Trevor Morrison is the Eric. M. and Laurie B. Roth Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at New York University School of Law. Morrison also served as Dean of NYU Law from 2013 to 2022. Morrison served as Associate Counsel to President Barack Obama in 2009. Earlier in his career, he was a law clerk to Judge Betty B. Fletcher of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1998-99) and to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the US Supreme Court (2002-03). Between those clerkships, he was a Bristow Fellow in the US Justice Department's Office of the Solicitor General (1999-2000), an attorney-advisor in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (2000-01), and an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) (2001-02).

Shalev Roisman

Shalev Gad Roisman is an Associate Professor of Law and Distinguished Early Career Scholar at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, where he teaches courses in administrative law, constitutional law, and presidential power. Roisman joined the University of Arizona from Harvard Law School, where he was a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law. Prior to that, he served as an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice, an acting assistant professor of lawyering at New York University School of Law, a senior associate in the litigation department of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, and as a law clerk to Judge Gerard E. Lynch and Judge Robert D. Sack on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He received his JD, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and his BA in history and economics from Cornell University.

Nicholas Handler

Nicholas Handler is an Associate Professor of Law at the Texas A&M School of Law, before which he was a Thomas C. Grey Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School. Handler obtained his bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University magna cum laude; he graduated with First Class Honors from Cambridge University with a Master’s in Philosophy before obtaining his juris doctor from Yale Law School, where he also was an Executive Editor for the Yale Law and Police Review.

Brittney Lane Kubisch (Moderator)

Brittney Lane Kubisch is the Ken Starr Faculty Fellow at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, where her research focuses on the original public meaning of the Constitution and structural limitations on government power. She received her B.A. from Harvard University and her J.D. from the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law in 2012, where she was the valedictorian and received numerous awards for trial and appellate advocacy.  After law school, she clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.  She later clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas at the United States Supreme Court.  In addition to clerking, Brittney spent more than 8 years in private practice as an appellate lawyer where she worked on cases before the Supreme Court and numerous appellate and district courts.

Akhil Reed Amar

Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law at both Yale College and Yale Law School. Amar joined the faculty in 1985, and he is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown – the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service. Amar also clerked for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer before joining Yale’s faculty.

Amar’s scholarship has received recognition from the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and the Supreme Court Justices have cited him in more than forty cases. In 2024, Amar received the Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. 

Amar is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books. Some of his most influential works include The Bill of Rights (1998), America’s Constitution: A Biography (2005), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012), The Constitution Today (2016), and The Words That Make Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840 (2021). Amar also co-hosts “Amarica’s Constitution,” a weekly podcast where he discusses constitutional issues with guests such as Bob Woodward, Neal Katyal, and Nina Totenberg.