Board of Directors | ACS

Joyce Vance

Joyce White Vance is a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law.

She served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. She was nominated for that position by President Barack Obama in May of 2009 and unanimously confirmed by the Senate in August of 2009. Professor Vance served on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee and was the Co-Chair of its Criminal Practice Subcommittee. As U.S. Attorney, she was responsible for overseeing all federal criminal investigations and prosecutions in north Alabama, including matters involving civil rights, national security, cybercrime, public corruption, health care and corporate fraud, violent crime and drug trafficking. She was also responsible for affirmative and defensive civil litigation on behalf of the government and for all federal criminal and civil appeals.

Joshua Matz

Joshua Matz is a partner at Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, resident in the DC office.

Joshua’s practice includes complex commercial disputes, constitutional and civil rights law, and Supreme Court and appellate litigation. He litigates a wide array of commercial cases, ranging from contract, fraud, and misappropriation disputes to consumer protection and sex discrimination matters. He advises individuals and companies on their response to congressional and state attorney general inquiries, participates in sensitive internal investigations, and supports clients seeking to navigate complex legal questions. Along with several of his colleagues at Kaplan Hecker, Joshua has represented Brown and Columbia Universities in Title IX litigation.

Gabriella Barbosa

Gabriella Barbosa is the proud daughter of immigrants and has experience as a teacher, lawyer, policymaker, and advocate, all aimed at centering and improving the outcomes of children from historically marginalized communities in Los Angeles and California. She is currently part of the Los Angeles office of the Ballmer Group, where she supports organizations and leaders in Los Angeles County committed to improving the economic mobility of children and families.

Most recently, she served as managing director of The Children’s Partnership, where she led the development, implementation and supervision of a multi-issue advocacy and policy agenda focused on advancing systemic changes that protect and promote the health and well-being of children from historically marginalized communities. Earlier in her career, she was a public interest attorney at Public Counsel, where she represented English Learner students and children in immigrant families; and a teacher at Los Angeles Unified School District, where she taught high school and adult school in Southeast Los Angeles and South Los Angeles.

She received a B.A. in International Relations and Human Rights from Columbia University and a law degree from Columbia Law School.

Roscoe Jones, Jr.

Roscoe Jones, Jr. is the 22^nd Dean of the Drake Law School in Des Moines, Iowa. He is the first Black Dean of the Law School and any college or school within Drake University.

Jones was elected chair of the ACS Board of Directors in December 2023.

Previously, he was Partner and Co-Chair of the Public Policy Practice Group at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where he helped clients navigate complex public policy matters and congressional investigations. His career also involved stints as chief of staff to a member of Congress, legislative director to Senator Dianne Feinstein, senior counsel to Senator Cory Booker, and senior counsel to Senator Patrick Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He served as special counsel to the Tom Perez, the then-Assistant Attorney General of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, appellate attorney in the Civil Rights Division, and assistant U.S. attorney in the Western District of Washington. He graduated from Stanford University and the University of Virginia Law School.

He clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for Judge Carl E. Stewart and U.S. District Court of Maryland for Judge Alexander Williams, Jr. He teaches at the Yale Law School and University of Michigan Law School and previously taught at the Harvard Kennedy School, Georgetown University Law Center, George Washington University Law School, and University of Washington Law and Evans Schools. A Stennis Fellow, Wasserstein Fellow, and Murnaghan Fellow, he has been published in the ACS’s Harvard Law & Policy Review.

Russ Feingold

Russ Feingold is the President of the American Constitution Society. He served as a United States Senator from Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011 and a Wisconsin State Senator from 1983 to 1993. From 2013 to 2015, he served as the United States Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

During his 18 years in the United States Senate, Russ was ranked 6th in the Senate for bipartisan voting. He is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and cosponsored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold Act), the only major piece of campaign finance reform legislation passed into law in decades. Russ was the only Senator to vote against the initial enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act during the first vote on the legislation and was well-known for his opposition to the Iraq War and as the Senate's leading opponent of the death penalty. He served on the Judiciary, Foreign Relations, Budget, and Intelligence Committees. Russ was Chairman or Ranking Member of the Constitution Subcommittee.

For the better part of the last 10 years and in addition to his congressional and diplomatic career, Russ has taught extensively at various American law schools including Stanford Law School, Yale Law School, Marquette University Law School, and Harvard Law School. In this capacity, he has played a significant mentoring role to law students, preparing him for his role as President of the American Constitution Society. He has also taught foreign policy to graduate and undergraduate students at Stanford University, University of Wisconsin, Yale University, Lawrence University, and American University.

Russ is the Honorary Ambassador for the Campaign for Nature which is a global effort calling on policymakers to commit to address the growing biodiversity crisis. The Campaign seeks a science-driven, ambitious new deal for nature at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, China, in 2021.

Russ recently co-authored The Constitution in Jeopardy: An Unprecedented Effort to Rewrite Our Fundamental Law and What We Can Do About It (2022) with Peter Prindiville, Non-resident Fellow, Stanford Constitutional Law Center.

Russ also is the author While America Sleeps: A Wake-Up Call for the Post-9/11 Era and contributes regularly to various publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. He appears frequently on MSNBC and CNN. Russ holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, all degrees awarded with honors.

Aziz Z. Huq

Aziz Z. Huq is the Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law and Mark Claster Mamolen Teaching Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School. Aziz’s scholarship concerns the interaction of constitutional design with individual rights and liberties.

As a faculty member at the University of Chicago, he has garnered the AALS Junior Scholars Paper Competition Award in Criminal Law and has been selected for the Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. Before joining the Law School, Aziz worked as Associate Counsel and then Director of the Liberty and National Security Project of the Brennan Center for Justice, litigating cases in both the U.S. Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. He was also a Senior Consultant Analyst for the International Crisis Group, researching constitutional design and implementation in Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. He clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court.

Aziz has also been very engaged with ACS through participating in events in DC and Chicago.

He graduated summa cum laude from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated from Columbia Law School, where he was awarded the John Ordronaux Prize.

Board: Board of Directors