May It Please the Court: SCOTUS Perspectives from Leading Supreme Court Advocates

Douglas Laycock is perhaps the nation’s leading authority on the law of religious liberty and also on the law of remedies. He has taught and written about these topics for four decades. He is currently the Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia School of Law, and the Alice McKean Young Regents Chair in Law Emeritus at the University of Texas School of Law.

Doug has testified frequently before Congress and has argued many cases in the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, where he has served as lead counsel in six cases. He is the author of the leading casebook Modern American Remedies, the award-winning monograph The Death of the Irreparable Injury Rule, and many articles in the leading law reviews. He co-edited a collection of essays, Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty. His many writings on religious liberty are published in a five-volume collection: Religious Liberty: Volume One: Overviews and History; Volume Two: The Free Exercise Clause; Volume Three: Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, Same-Sex Marriage Legislation, and the Culture Wars; Volume Four: Federal Legislation After the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, with More on the Culture Wars; and Volume Five: The Free Speech and Establishment Clauses.

Doug was elected to The American Law Institute in October 1983 and was elected to the Council in May 2001. He served as Second Vice President from 2008 to 2015, and as First Vice President from 2015 to 2019. He resigned from the Council and Vice Presidency in 2019 to become a Reporter for Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Remedies. He is an Adviser to Principles of the Law, Student Sexual Misconduct: Procedural Frameworks for Colleges and Universities, and previously served as an Adviser on Restatement of the Law Third, Restitution and Unjust Enrichment.

Before joining the University of Virginia's faculty in 2010, Doug served as the Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. Prior to that he taught for 25 years at the University of Texas and for five years at the University of Chicago. 

He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

Nicole A. Saharsky is co-head of Mayer Brown’s Supreme Court & Appellate Practice. She focusses her practice on briefing and arguing cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and in the federal and state appellate courts and on developing legal strategy for the trail courts and agency proceedings.

She previously served for ten years as an Assistant to the Solicitor General in the United States Department of Justice, where she was responsible for briefing and arguing cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and overseeing government appeals in the federal court of appeals. Nicole has argued more cases in the U.S. Supreme Court than any other woman over the last decade. She has argued 29 cases, briefed 45 cases on the merits, and filed hundreds of certiorari-stage briefs and motions in the Supreme Court. Her cases involved a broad range of business issues, including securities fraud, intellectual property, labor and employment, bankruptcy, personal jurisdiction, and corporate criminal liability.

Nicole frequently is asked to provide commentary on the Supreme Court by C-SPAN, Law360, Reuters, and other national media outlets. She recently was featured in a Law360 article and video series on the topic, “Will the Future of the Supreme Court Bar Be Female?”

Universally considered to be among the country's premier Supreme Court and appellate advocates, Seth Waxman served as Solicitor General of the United States from 1997 through January 2001. In addition to leading the firm's appellate practice, Seth engages in a broad litigation and counseling practice, with particular emphasis on complex challenges involving governments or public policy, intellectual property, regulatory, criminal and commercial issues.

A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, he also is a widely respected trial litigator. In January 2016, The American Lawyer named him "Litigator of the Year."

His practice spans both federal and state trial and appellate courts. He has delivered 80 oral arguments in the United States Supreme Court and many more in the lower federal and state courts. His clients range from financial institutions to technology, consumer, industrial and media companies, universities and Indian tribes, and he leads the firm's efforts to counsel tribal governments. He also represents a number of local, state and national governments and prominent business and government executives and professionals. The recipient of numerous professional awards and honors, Seth is among a small handful of practicing attorneys elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds several honorary degrees, as well as the Jefferson Medal in Law, an honor awarded once a year and only rarely to an attorney in private practice. In recognition of exceptional service to law enforcement, he holds the extraordinary status of permanent honorary Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.