Alan B. Morrison is the Lerner Family Associate Dean for Public Interest & Public Service at GW Law. He is responsible for creating pro bono opportunities for students, bringing a wide range of public interest programs to the law school, encouraging students to seek positions in the non-profit and government sectors, and assisting students find ways to fund their legal education to make it possible for them to pursue careers outside of traditional law firms. 

For most of his career, Dean Morrison worked for the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which he co-founded with Ralph Nader in 1972 and directed for over 25 years. His work involved law reform litigation in various areas including: open government, opening up the legal profession, suing agencies that fail to comply with the law, enforcing principles of separation of powers, protecting the rights of consumers, and protecting unrepresented class members in class action settlements. 

He has argued 20 cases in the Supreme Court, including victories in Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar (holding lawyers subject to the antitrust laws for using minimum fee schedules); Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council (making commercial speech subject to the First Amendment); and INS v. Chadha (striking down over 200 federal laws containing the legislative veto as a violation of separation of powers). 

Anne Marie Lewis is the Director of Safety & Technology Policy at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, in Washington, DC.  She supports Alliance members on advanced vehicle technology and safety topics, including automated driving vehicle policy.

Dr. Lewis obtained her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Masters from the University of Michigan in Mechanical Engineering, and PhD from the University of Michigan in Mechanical Engineering and Natural Resources and Environment.

Prior to her current role, she worked at Booz Allen Hamilton as a technical advisor to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy at the US Department of Energy . During this time she supported over 15 projects across five energy technology funding programs. Prior to this, she was an AAAS Science and Technology Congressional Fellow in the Office of Senator Heitkamp where she worked on a variety of energy policy issues.

Bryant Walker Smith is an assistant professor at South Carolina University School of Law and (by courtesy) in the School of Engineering at the University of South Carolina. He is also an affiliate scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, an adjunct clinical professor at the University of Michigan Law School, a member of the US Department of Transportation's Advisory Committee on Automation in Transportation, the chair of the Emerging Technology Law Committee of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, the reporter to the Uniform Law Commission's Drafting Committee on Highly Automated Vehicles, the chair of the Planning Task Force for the On-Road Automated Vehicle Standards Committee of the Society of Automotive and Aerospace Engineers, a faculty affiliate of the Rule of Law Collaborative, and a member of the New York Bar.

His research focuses on issues of risk and trust in new technologies, especially automated driving systems, unmanned aerial systems, and other transportation technologies. As an internationally recognized expert on the law of driverless vehicles, Bryant taught the first-ever course on this topic (as well as the first course on hyperloops) and is regularly consulted by government, industry, and media. His publications are available at newlypossible.org.

Before joining the University of South Carolina, he led the legal aspects of automated driving program at Stanford University, clerked for the Hon. Evan J. Wallach at the United States Court of International Trade, and worked as a fellow at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He holds both an LL.M. in International Legal Studies and a J.D. (cum laude) from New York University School of Law and a B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin. Prior to his legal career, he worked as a transportation engineer.

A nationally recognized insurance coverage litigator, Lorie S. Masters handles all aspects of complex, commercial litigation and arbitration.  Lorie has advised clients on a wide range of liability coverages, including insurance for environmental, employment, directors and officers, fiduciary, property damage, cyber, and other liabilities.  She also handles various types of first-party property insurance claims, including claims under boiler and machinery, business-interruption, contingent business-interruption, extra expense and other related coverages.

Ms. Masters has handled and tried cases in state and federal trial and appellate courts across the country and in arbitrations in the United States and abroad.  At issue in these cases typically have been millions of dollars of insurance coverage for products and environmental liability, silicone gel breast implant claims, and other types of liability.  Most recently, she obtained a settlement worth millions of dollars under D&O and E&O policies bought by a national nonprofit facing RICO and other high-stakes claims.  She served as lead trial counsel for policyholder in an action enforcing CGL insurance coverage for the then-largest property damage class action settlement ever.  The National Law Journal called that jury’s verdict one of the “most significant jury verdicts” of the year.  She has also handled many other matters in litigation, arbitration, and settlement negotiations, recovering, collectively, billions of dollars for her clients.

Ms. Masters is co-author of Insurance Coverage Litigation, an in-depth legal treatise first published by Aspen Law & Business in 1997 and updated annually.  She co-authored a second book, entitled Liability Insurance in International Arbitration:  The Bermuda Form, which won the 2012 Book Prize from the British Insurance Law Association for “outstanding contributions to the literature on insurance,” and is recognized as the seminal work on the issue of Bermuda Form arbitration.  She was invited to serve as an Adviser to the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, Liability Insurance, a position she has held since 2010. 

A partner in the insurance coverage practice, Ms. Masters’s clients say she “is very good at explaining complicated issues, and then distilling them for commercial use,” according to Chambers USA 2016, which ranks her in the upper echelons of her practice nationwide.   She also was named a Top Ten Super Lawyer in DC for 2014 and 2015, among other recognitions.

Ms. Masters writes and speaks extensively on insurance coverage, technology, and litigation. In addition to her legal practice, she is active in diversity and inclusion matters and has represented many individuals and groups pro bono, including policyholders denied health care coverage and victims of human trafficking.  In 2007, she obtained one of the first money judgments in the country under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, after a trial in the federal court in the District of Columbia. 

Ms. Masters currently serves on the Board of Governors of the American Bar Association (ABA) and as Treasurer of the DC Bar Foundation, the largest funder of legal services in the DC area.  She is very proud of her service in 2008-2009 as President of the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia (“WBA”) and her role in helping to organize the WBA’s centennial celebrations in 2016-2017.  She helped to found the American College of Coverage and Extracontractual Counsel and served as its second President in 2013-2014.  She served as national Policyholder Chair of the Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee of the ABA Section of Litigation, 2000-2003. 

She is admitted to practice in the US Supreme Court, US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, US District Court for the District of Columbia, US District Court for the District of Maryland, US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.  She ran for attorney general in the District of Columbia’s first-ever election for that position in 2014.

Victor Schwartz chairs Shook Hardy & Bacon L.L.P.’s Public Policy Group, which focuses on integrating litigation, government affairs, and public relations.  The group seeks to be the vanguard of developing public policy issues that will help improve our civil justice system.  Mr. Schwartz also has an active appellate practice and advises product manufacturers on liability prevention, litigation and public relations issues.  He currently serves as General Counsel to the American Tort Reform Association.

Sought by print and broadcast media, Mr. Schwartz is frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.  He has appeared on Oprah, 60 Minutes and leading news programs.  The Legal Times of Washington has named Mr.  Schwartz one of Washington’s Top 30 “Visionary” lawyers, and The National Law Journal named Mr. Schwartz one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States in 2013.

Mr. Schwartz is co-author of the most widely used torts casebook in the United States, Prosser, Wade and Schwartz’s Torts (13th ed. 2015).  He is also author of the leading text Comparative Negligence (5th ed. 2010).

Mr. Schwartz has been a principal advisor for each of the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatement (Third) of Torts projects; Products Liability, Apportionment of Liability, and Liability for Physical Injury and Emotional Harm.  He is a life member of the ALI.  In light of this experience, he is a frequent speaker at judicial education programs. 

Prior to entering the full time practice of law, Mr. Schwartz was a professor and dean at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.  He currently serves on the College’s Board of Visitors.  In 2012, the College established the Professor Victor E. Schwartz Chair in Tort Law.

Mr. Schwartz, while at the U.S. Department of Commerce, served as chair of the Federal Inter-Agency Task Force on Product Liability, and the Federal Inter-Agency Council on Insurance.  He was the principal author of the Uniform Product Liability Act and the Federal Risk Retention Act.  He received the Secretary of Commerce’s Award for Professional Excellence.

Mr. Schwartz obtained his B.A. summa cum laude from Boston University and J.D. magna cum laude from Columbia Law School.  He is a member of the bars of New York, Ohio, and the District of Columbia.

Goodwin Liu is an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. Elected to The American Law Institute in 2008 and to the Council in 2013, he has twice served as Chair of the Special Committee on the ALI Early Career Scholars Medal.

He was previously a professor of law and associate dean at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, before joining the court in 2011. Before that, he was a litigator in the Washington, DC, office of O’Melveny & Myers and also served in the U.S. Department of Education and the Corporation for National Service.

Justice Liu holds a B.S. from Stanford University, an M.Phil. from Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Immediately after law school, he clerked for Judge David S. Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and later clerked on the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., a partner in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, is global Co-Chair of the firm’s Litigation Group and previously led the firm’s appellate, crisis management, transnational litigation and media groups.  He also is a member of the firm’s Executive and Management Committees.

As The New York Times has noted, Mr. Boutrous has “a long history of pushing the courts and the public to see the bigger picture on heated issues.”  He has represented clients in the federal and state appellate courts throughout the nation in a wide spectrum of cases.  He has argued more than 90 appeals, including before the Supreme Court of the United States, 12 different federal circuit courts of appeals, nine different state supreme courts and a multitude of other appellate and trial courts in complex civil, constitutional and criminal matters.  Mr. Boutrous has successfully persuaded courts to overturn some of the largest jury verdicts and class actions in history.  In 2011, he successfully represented Walmart before the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dukes case, which unanimously reversed what had been the largest employment class action in history and established important standards governing class actions (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes).  In 2013, he successfully represented the prevailing party in obtaining a unanimous Supreme Court decision enforcing the Class Action Fairness Act (Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Knowles).  Also in 2013, Mr. Boutrous successfully represented plaintiffs in the Supreme Court in a case invalidating California’s prohibition on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8 (Hollingsworth v. Perry).

As both a crisis management strategist and a seasoned appellate and media lawyer, Mr. Boutrous has extensive experience handling high-profile litigation, media relations and media legal issues.  He routinely advises clients in planning how to respond, and in responding, to crises and other especially significant legal problems that attract the media spotlight.  According to The National Law Journal, which in 2013 named him one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America,” he “is known for his wise, strategic advice to clients in crisis and is a media law star.”

Mr. Boutrous is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Women’s Media Foundation and its 2015 Leadership Honoree.  He is also a sustaining member of the Product Liability Advisory Council.

Mr. Boutrous received his law degree, summa cum laude, from the University of San Diego School of Law in 1987, where he was Valedictorian and Editor-in-Chief of the San Diego Law Review.

John B. King Jr. is the president and CEO of The Education Trust, a national nonprofit organization that seeks to identify and close opportunity and achievement gaps, from preschool through college. Mr. King served in President Barack Obama’s cabinet as the 10th U.S. Secretary of Education. In tapping him to lead the U.S. Department of Education, President Obama called him “an exceptionally talented educator,” citing his commitment to “preparing every child for success” and his lifelong dedication to education as a teacher, principal, and leader of schools and school systems.

Mr. King began his career in education as a high school social studies teacher in Puerto Rico and Boston, Mass., and as a middle school principal.

His life story is an extraordinary testament to the transformative power of education. Both of his parents were career New York City public school educators, whose example serves as an enduring inspiration. Both of Mr. King’s parents passed away from illness by the time he was 12 years old. He credits New York City public school teachers — particularly educators at P.S. 276 in Canarsie and Mark Twain Junior High School in Coney Island — for saving his life by providing him with rich and engaging educational experiences and by giving him hope for the future.

Before becoming education secretary, Mr. King carried out the duties of the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education, overseeing all policies and programs related to P-12 education, English learners, special education, and innovation. In this role, he also oversaw the agency’s operations. He joined the department following his tenure as the first African American and Puerto Rican to serve as New York State Education Commissioner.

Mr. King holds a Bachelor of Arts in government from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, as well as a Master of Arts in the teaching of social studies and a Doctorate in Education from Teachers College at Columbia University. He serves as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Education and is a member of several boards, including those for The Century Foundation, The Robin Hood Foundation, and Teach Plus. He also serves on several advisory boards, including Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Reach Higher Initiative, the Rework America Task Force, the GOOD+ Foundation’s Fatherhood Leadership Council, and the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement at the University of California.

Mr. King lives in Silver Spring, Md., with his wife (a former kindergarten and first-grade teacher) and his two daughters, who attend local public schools.

Nina Rees is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the leading national nonprofit organization committed to advancing the charter school movement. She is responsible for setting the strategic vision of the organization, fundraising and working with her senior team to foster a climate in which charter schools can grow and have a positive impact on the academic achievement of all students.

Ms. Rees has over 20 years of experience in Washington, D.C., most recently as Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives for Knowledge Universe, a leading global education company with investments in early childhood education, before- and after-school programs and online instruction.

Prior to her tenure at KU, she served as the first Deputy Under Secretary for Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. In this capacity, she oversaw the administration of 28 grant programs, supporting 1,300 projects, and was responsible for spearheading innovative federal programs and policies such as school choice, charter schools, and alternative routes to teacher certification and school leadership. Before moving to the Education Department, Ms. Rees served as Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy to the Vice President at the White House.

Prior to serving in the executive branch, Ms. Rees was the senior education analyst at the Heritage Foundation, where she authored more than two dozen policy briefs and served as the foundation’s chief spokesperson on education. She previously worked at a public interest law firm and an advocacy organization. She began her career in Washington, D.C., on Capitol Hill, where she worked for then-Congressman Porter Goss (R-FL) in 1991.

Ms. Rees has appeared on various news outlets including Bloomberg, CNBC, C-SPAN and PBS’s NewsHour. Her articles and opinions have been published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. She also writes a regular column for U.S. News & World Report.

Ms. Rees serves on the board of directors of the PIE Network, the advisory committee of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the advisory boards of Honored and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. 

She lives in McLean, Virginia, with her husband and daughter.

Elena Kagan, Associate Justice, was born in New York, New York, on April 28, 1960. She received an A.B. from Princeton in 1981, an M. Phil. from Oxford in 1983, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986. She clerked for Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1986 to 1987 and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1987 Term. After briefly practicing law at a Washington, DC law firm, she became a law professor, first at the University of Chicago Law School and later at Harvard Law School. She also served for four years in the Clinton Administration, as Associate Counsel to the President and then as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. Between 2003 and 2009, she served as the Dean of Harvard Law School. In 2009, President Obama nominated her as the Solicitor General of the United States. A year later, the President nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on May 10, 2010. She took her seat on August 7, 2010.

Paul D. Clement is a partner in the Washington, DC, office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.  He served as the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008. Before his confirmation, he served as Acting Solicitor General for nearly a year and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General for more than three years.

Mr. Clement has argued more than 90 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including McConnell v. FEC, Tennessee v. Lane, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, Credit Suisse v. Billing, United States v. Booker, MGM v. Grokster, ABC v. Aereo, and Hobby Lobby v. Burwell. He has argued more Supreme Court cases since 2000 than any lawyer in or out of government. He has also argued many important cases in the lower courts, including Walker v. Cheney, United States v. Moussaoui, and NFL v. Brady.

Following law school, he clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, he went on to serve as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism, and Property Rights.

Mr. Clement is a Distinguished Lecturer in Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he has taught in various capacities since 1998, and a Distinguished Lecturer in Government at Georgetown University. He also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute. He previously served as an Adviser for the ALI’s recently adopted Principles of the Law, Election Administration: Non-Precinct Voting and Resolution of Ballot-Counting Disputes.

Under Elizabeth J. Cabraser’s leadership, Lieff Cabraser has become one of the country’s largest law firms serving clients seeking redress for financial and consumer fraud, anti-competitive practices, harmful drugs and products, and illegal employment practices. She has served as court-appointed lead, co-lead, or class counsel in scores of federal multi-district and state coordinated proceedings, including serving as Lead Counsel and Chair of the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in the historic nationwide Volkswagen “Clean Diesel” Emissions fraud litigation and the recently filed Fiat Chrysler Ecodiesel Emissions fraud litigation.

Elected to the ALI in 1993 and to its Council in 1999, Ms. Cabraser serves on the Council’s Executive Committee and has served on several other Council Committees, is an Adviser for Restatement Third, Conflict of Laws, Restatement of the Law, Consumer Contracts, and Restatement Third, Torts: Liability for Economic Harm, and previously was an Adviser on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments project and the Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation project.  Since 2011, she has been a member of the Federal Civil Rules Advisory Committee.

Ms. Cabraser has written and spoken extensively on substantive legal issues as well as those related to the advancement of women in the profession. She lectures on class action and complex litigation at Berkeley and Columbia Law Schools, and has also lectured and conducted seminars for the Federal Judicial Center, ALI-ABA (now known as ALI CLE), the National Center for State Courts, Vanderbilt University Law School, and the Practising Law Institute. She has been named repeatedly to the Lawdragon 500, The Top 100 California Lawyers, and as a Super Lawyer in multiple fields. In 2010, the American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession honored Elizabeth with its Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award, regarded by many as the highest honor in the legal profession for women lawyers. She was selected by Law360 as a 2016 MVP for Class Action Law, was named 2017’s “Plaintiff Attorney of the Year” by Benchmark Litigation, and in November 2017 received the National Law Journal’s “Lifetime Achievement” award. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

David M. Rubenstein is a Co-Founder and Co-CEO of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms. Mr. Rubenstein co-founded the firm in 1987. Since then, Carlyle has grown into a firm managing $174 billion from 31 offices around the world.

Mr. Rubenstein, a native of Baltimore, is a 1970 magna cum laude graduate of Duke, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa. Following Duke, Mr. Rubenstein graduated in 1973 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was an editor of The Law Review.

From 1973 to 1975, Mr. Rubenstein practiced law in New York with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. From 1975 to 1976, he served as Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments. From 1977 to 1981, during the Carter Administration, Mr. Rubenstein was Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. After his White House service and before co-founding Carlyle, Mr. Rubenstein practiced law in Washington with Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman).

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public-interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death-row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Mr. Stevenson has successfully argued several cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and recently won a historic ruling in the Court banning mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger.

Mr. Stevenson has also initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts challenging the legacy of racial inequality in America. His work fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal-justice system has won him numerous awards including the ABA Wisdom Award for Public Service, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award Prize, the Olaf Palme International Prize, the ACLU National Medal of Liberty, the National Public Interest Lawyer of the Year Award, the Gruber Prize for International Justice, and the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award. In 2015, he was named to the Time 100 recognizing the world’s most influential people. In 2016, he received the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award. He was named in Fortune’s 2016 and 2017 World’s Greatest Leaders list.

He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government, has been awarded 29 honorary doctoral degrees and is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. He is the recent author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller, JustMercy, which was named by Time magazine as one of the 10 best books of nonfiction for 2014 and has been awarded several honors including the Carnegie Medal by the American Library Association for the best nonfiction book of 2014 and a 2015 NAACP Image Award. He was elected to the ALI in 2016.