Garrett Epps is Legal Affairs Editor of The Washington Monthly. Previously he was Professor Emeritus at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where he taught courses in constitutional law, First Amendment law, and fiction and non-fiction writing for law students.
Epps has been an active contributor to ACS, since shortly after its founding. He was featured as a speaker at its National Convention and is a regular contributor to the organization’s other policy events, seminars, and discussions.
Previously, Epps was the Orlando J. and Marian H. Hollins Professor of Law at the University of Oregon. He co-founded the Richmond Mercury, served as a columnist for the Independent Weekly, and worked as an editor and reporter at the Richmond Afro-American, Washington Post, The Free Lance-Star, and The Virginia Churchman.
Epps clerked for the Honorable John D. Butzner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He earned his B.A. from Harvard College, where he was Editor of The Harvard Crimson, and his M.A. in creative writing from Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia. Additionally, Epps holds a J.D. and a LL.M. in Comparative and International Law from Duke University School of Law.
Holly Fechner is a Partner at Covington & Burling LLP and a co-chair of the firm’s technology industry group. She advises clients on complex public policy matters. Nationally ranked by Chambers, Fechner received the 2019 American Lawyer Magazine "Dealmaker of the Year" award. Fechner is Executive Director of Invent Together, a campaign dedicated to understanding the gender, race, income, and other diversity gaps in invention and patenting and supporting public policies to close them. She serves on the board of directors of the American Constitution Society and has taught at the Harvard Kennedy School, the University of Maryland Law School and George Washington University. Prior to Covington, Fechner was Policy Director for Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Chief Labor and Pensions Counsel for the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee. She graduated from Oberlin College and received her law and women’s studies graduate degrees from the University of Michigan.
Peter M. Shane is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law Emeritus, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and Distinguished Scholar in Residence, NYU Law.
His areas of expertise include Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Legislation and Regulation, Law and the Presidency,
Peter is also a frequent op-ed writer, contributing essays to numerous outlets including Slate, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Washington Monthly, Bloomberg BNA, and Huffington Post.
Peter received his A.B. degree from Harvard College and his J.D. from Yale Law School. Professor Shane clerked for the Hon. Alvin B. Rubin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He served as an attorney- adviser in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel and as an assistant general counsel in the Office of Management and Budget, before beginning to teach full-time.
Franita Tolson is the Dean and the Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law at University of Southern California Gould School of Law and an expert in the areas of election law, constitutional law, legal history, and employment discrimination. Tolson is an active member of ACS and has demonstrated a deep commitment to its amplifying its network beyond the national nonprofit’s West Coast affiliates.
Previously, Tolson was the Betty T. Ferguson Professor of Voting Rights at Florida State University College of Law and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northwestern University School of Law. Tolson’s research has been featured in the nation’s leading law reviews, including The Notre Dame Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Boston University Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review, and she has served as a contributor and issue expert for various media organizations, including Reuters, Bloomberg Law, The Hill, and HuffPost.
Tolson clerked for both the Honorable Ann Claire Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Chief Judge Ruben Castillo of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. She earned her B.A. from Truman State University and her J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.
Alice O’Brien serves as General Counsel to the National Education Association which represents three million educators who serve in our nation's schools and institutions of higher education. She has served in that role since March of 2010. Prior to that, Alice served as the Chief Counsel to the California Teachers Association (from 2008-10) and as an associate and then member of the labor law firm of Bredhoff & Kaiser PLLC.(from 1995 until 2008).
During her tenure at NEA, Alice has expanded the scope and reach of NEA’s legal advocacy to include efforts to counter censorship, book bans and anti-LGBTQ initiatives and to support educators targeted for teaching in ways that reflect and affirm the experiences of all of their students. NEA’s legal work also includes efforts to fix the nation’s student debt programs to provide meaningful student debt relief, to protect public education by enforcing state constitutional commitments to public education and to challenge state laws that roll back and undermine worker rights including the rights of workers to have a voice at work through a union. NEA also has redoubled its efforts to ensure that the federal courts reflect the best of our country including lawyers who have decided their lives to representing working people and unions.
Alice earned her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Michele Bratcher Goodwin is the Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy. She is the Co-Faculty Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.
Professor Goodwin previously was a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine and founding director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy. She was the Abraham Pinanski Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Goodwin is the 2023 recipient of the California Women’s Law Center Pursuit of Justice Award. In 2022, the American Bar Association recognized her with the Margaret Brent Award. In 2020-21, she was bestowed the Distinguished Senior Faculty Award for Research, the highest honor bestowed by the University of California. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute as well as an elected Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Hastings Center (the organization central to the founding of bioethics).
