Judge Alice Moore Batchelder is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit with her chambers in Medina, Ohio. She was nominated by President George H. W. Bush. Judge Batchelder served as chief judge of the court from 2009 to 2014.  

Judge Batchelder began her judicial career serving as a federal bankruptcy judge in the Northern District of Ohio. Immediately prior to the U.S. Court of Appeals she served as a judge for United States district court for the Northern District of Ohio. She has retired from full-time service, assuming senior status in March 2019.  

Judge Batchelder is a native of Wilmington, Delaware. She is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University. She graduated from the University of Akron School of Law with a J.D. and from the University of Virginia School of Law with her LL.M. She is married to Bill Batchelder, retired judge and former speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives. 

Judge Janice Rogers Brown was confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 8, 2005. She retired from the court in 2017. From 1996 to 2005, she was Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. Previously, she served as Associate Justice of the Third District Court of Appeals in Sacramento and as the Legal Affairs Secretary to Governor Pete Wilson.

Prior to joining Governor Wilson’s senior staff, Judge Brown was an associate at Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor. Earlier, she served as Deputy Secretary and General Counsel for California’s Business Transportation and Housing Agency (BT&H), working primarily with business regulatory departments. She came to BT&H after eight years in the State of California Attorney General’s Office, where she worked in both the criminal appellate and civil trial divisions. She also worked for two years for the Legislative Counsel and previously served as an adjunct professor at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law.

Judge Brown is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law and California State University, Sacramento. In 2004 Judge Brown received a Master of Laws degree in Judicial Process after completing the Graduate Program for Judges at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Judge Brown received the UCLA School of Law Alumnus of the year award in 1998 and UCLA’s 2004 Award for Excellence in Public Service.

 John K. Bush is a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was nominated in 2017 by President Donald J. Trump. Prior to joining the court, Judge Bush was a partner in the Louisville office of Bingham Greenbaum Doll LLP, where he also was co-chair of the firm’s litigation department. He began his legal career in the Washington, D.C office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.  

Judge Bush graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University in 1986, and cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1989. He served as an Executive Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and was an Ames Moot Court finalist. After graduating from law school, Judge Bush served as a law clerk for Judge J. Smith Henley of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.  

Robert J. Conrad, Jr. is a United States District Judge for the Western District of North Carolina. He was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed on April 28, 2005. He became Chief Judge of the district in 2006 and served until 2013.  

Judge Conrad’s legal career began in 1983. He engaged in the  private practice of law before becoming an Assistant United States Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina from 1989 to 2001. In 2001, he was nominated and confirmed to the position of United Sates Attorney for the same district where he served from 2001 to 2005. Judge Conrad is a native of Chicago, Illinois. He is a 1980 graduate of Clemson University and received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1983

William C. Griesbach is a United States District Judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. He was appointed in 2002, by President George W. Bush. Prior to that, he served for seven years as a Wisconsin circuit court judge in Brown County. He was confirmed by the Senate on April 25, 2002. He served as a Chief Judge from 2012 until 2019. Judge Griesbach assumed senior status on December 31, 2019.  

Judge Griesbach is a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is a graduate of Marquette University and he received his J.D from Marquette University Law School. After he graduated from law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Bruce F. Beilfuss of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. After completion of his clerkship he was a staff attorney of U.S Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1980 to 1982.  

Edith H. Jones is a United States Circuit Judge and the former Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Judge Jones was nominated to the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan on February 27, 1985. Judge Jones Served as chief judge of the Fifth Circuit from 2006 to 2012.  

Judge Jones is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Cornell University with a degree in economics. She received her J.D. from University of Texas School of Law, where she was a member of the Texas Law Review. Prior to her judicial appointment, she was in private practice, working for the firm of Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones in Houston, Texas. She became the firm’s first female partner. Her specialization was bankruptcy law. From 1982 to 1983 she served as General Counsel for the Republican Party of Texas.  

Judge Jones sits on the board of the directors of the Boy Scouts of America and the Garland Walker American Inns of Courts.   

Judge James Morrison is the Chief Judge of the Marinette County Circuit Court of Wisconsin. He serves also as Chair of the Committee of Chief Judges in Wisconsin. 

He was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Morrison received his undergraduate degree in biology from the College of Saint Thomas in 1970. He graduated with honors from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1973 and was a member of the Minnesota Law Review. Upon his graduation he practiced law in Chicago for three and a half years, representing a wide range of clients. In 1976, he moved to Marinette, Wisconsin and practiced as an attorney until 2012, when he was appointed to the bench by Governor Walker. 

During his judicial career, he served as an administrative chief judge of Wisconsin and was involved in Commercial Court Pilot Project. Judge Morrison established a drug court, CASA program, and mental health court in Marinette County. He also served on the Board of Bar Examiners and was chair for two years. Judge Morrison has taught a number of judicial education programs. 

He is married to his wife Barbara and has three children and six grandchildren. 

Judge Diarmuid O’ Scannlain is a 34-year veteran of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was appointed by President Reagan in 1986. As a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Judge O’Scannlain has participated in over 11,000 federal cases and has written hundreds of published opinions on a broad range of subjects including constitutional law, international law, securities law, administrative law, and criminal law. The late Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Judge O'Scannlain to the Federal Judicial Center's Advisory Committee on Appellate Judge Education. In 2009, Chief Justice Roberts appointed Judge O’Scannlain to the International Judicial Relations Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference and subsequently appointed him Chairman in 2010. In 2017, he assumed senior status. 

Judge O’Scannlain received a J.D degree in 1963 from Harvard Law School. He graduated with his undergraduate degree from St. John’s University. He also earned an LL.M degree at University of Virginia law School. Judge O’Scannlain holds three honorary doctorate degrees: an LL.D. (honoris causa) degree from the University of Notre Dame in 2002, an LL.D. (honoris causa) degree from Lewis & Clark College in 2003 and the LL.D. (honoris causa) degree from the University of Portland in 2011. Judge O’Scannlain is an adjunct professor at Lewis & Clark Law School and teaches at numerous federal appellate seminars for judges and attorneys.  

Judge O’Scannlain, a first generation Irish-American son of immigrant parents from Sligo and Derry, is married to Maura Nolan and has eight children: Sean, Jane, Brendan, Kevin, Megan, Christopher, Anne, and Kate and nineteen grandchildren. His chambers are in the Pioneer Courthouse in Portland, Oregon. 

Judge George O’Toole is a federal judge with the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He was nominated in 1995 by President Bill Clinton. Prior to serving as a federal judge, he served as an associate justice for the Superior Court of Massachusetts from 1990 to 1995. He was appointed by Governor Michael Dukakis. Judge O’Toole also served as an associate justice in the Boston Municipal Court from 1982 to 1990. Previously, Judge O’Toole was also a private practice attorney in Massachusetts from 1972 to 1982.  

Judge O’Toole is a native of Worcester, Massachusetts, and is a graduate of Boston College. He received his J.D degree from Harvard Law School in 1972. 

James Wilson (1742-98), an émigré from Scotland, became one of the premier minds and leading figures of the American Founding.   He would settle eventually in Philadelphia, but he brought with him an education shaped at the Universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.  Steeped in the commonsense philosophy of one of the most luminous teachers of the time, Thomas Reid, Wilson brought part of the Scottish Enlightenment to America.  He played a critical part throughout the deliberations in Philadelphia that brought forth the Constitution; indeed, he was one of the few men who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  He would go on to become a central figure in the Ratifying Convention in Pennsylvania,  and he would be appointed by George Washington to the first Supreme Court.   While Wilson was on the Court he delivered an elegant series of lectures on jurisprudence at the University of Pennsylvania, lectures drawing on sources ancient and modern.  Those lectures gave us an account of the American law, and the American Founding, that take us to the philosophic and moral roots of jurisprudence.  Threads of that teaching have run through the writings of Hadley Arkes and other scholars who will be involved in the ongoing work of the James Wilson Institute.  Among Wilson’s contemporaries,  Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall shared with him that capacity to trace their judgments back to those deep axioms or principles of law—the principles that were there before the Constitution;  the principles that would be necessary to any “regime of law.”

Wilson famously said that the purpose of this new Constitution was not to invent new rights but to secure and enlarge those rights we already had by nature.  The doctrines of natural right law could not be separated from the work of Wilson and the American founders as they shaped a new regime and, later, a Constitution.    That regime suffered its severest test during our crisis of "the house divided," and it required nothing less than the art of Lincoln to restate those teachings of natural right in a manner even more compelling. The teachings of Wilson, Hamilton, Marshall, Lincoln are still there to be read and taught anew.