FedSoc Forums

Recent litigation has resurfaced longstanding debates over the scope of First Amendment protections for members of the armed forces. While service members retain constitutional rights, the unique demands of military service have long permitted restrictions on speech and conduct that would not be permissible in civilian life. This panel will examine the historical development of First Amendment protections in the military context and discuss how that history informs current legal disputes and policy debates.
Featuring:

Prof. Antony Kolenc, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Ave Maria School of Law
Christopher J. Motz, Senior Counsel, First Liberty Institute
Iain Pedden, Chief Defense Counsel, U.S. Marine Corps
(Moderator) Thomas Wheatley, Special Counsel, Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense

Recent litigation has resurfaced longstanding debates over the scope of First Amendment protections for members of the armed forces. While service members retain constitutional rights, the unique demands of military service have long permitted restrictions on speech and conduct that would not be permissible in civilian life. This panel will examine the historical development of First Amendment protections in the military context and discuss how that history informs current legal disputes and policy debates.
Featuring:

Prof. Antony Kolenc, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Ave Maria School of Law
Christopher J. Motz, Senior Counsel, First Liberty Institute
Iain Pedden, Chief Defense Counsel, U.S. Marine Corps
(Moderator) Thomas Wheatley, Special Counsel, Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense

On June 30, the Supreme Court held in Trump v. Barbara that nearly all children born on U.S. soil are citizens at birth. But questions remain about the decision’s reasoning and its legal and policy implications.The decision has not ended the debate. The administration and other proponents of a narrower understanding of birthright citizenship are now testing the decision’s boundaries. On August 6, the President issued two executive orders addressing birthright citizenship and birth tourism. The first order expressly identifies categories the administration contends “do not fall within the rule of birthright citizenship as announced by the Supreme Court.” Within days, the issue was back in federal court.Join the Federalist Society and the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy for a two-part online symposium featuring scholars and practitioners examining the decision, its impact, and what comes next. The programs will accompany a collection of short essays to be published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy's online publication, Per Curiam.
Featuring:

Gene Hamilton, President and Co-Founder, America First Legal Foundation
Hon. Steven J. Menashi, Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
(Moderator) Tiago De Almeida Graff, Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy

Gordon S. Wood, who passed away in June, was one of the nation’s most influential historians of the American Revolution and the early Republic. For more than half a century, his scholarship has shaped how Americans—including legal scholars and the judiciary—understand the Revolution, the Founding, and the Constitution. In landmark works, including the Bancroft Prize-winning The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Wood explored how the colonies became a new nation and established a new constitutional order.
On Constitution Day, join us for a conversation reflecting on Wood’s life, scholarship, and legacy. The panel will consider his account of the Revolution and the Constitution, his influence on constitutional scholarship and public understanding of the Founding, and what his work teaches about interpreting the past on its own terms amid continuing debates over America’s origins and ideals.
Featuring:

Richard Brookhiser, Senior Editor, National Review
Prof. Steven Calabresi, Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
Prof. Jeffrey Rosen, Senior Fellow, FIRE; CEO Emeritus, National Constitution Center
(Moderator) Hon. Lisa Branch, Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

For nearly fifty years, the Presidential Records Act has governed the preservation, ownership, and eventual disclosure of presidential records. But in April, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the Act is unconstitutional and that “the President need not further comply with its dictates.” OLC argued that the statute exceeds Congress’s powers and intrudes on the Executive's independence.That conclusion has now moved from the realm of executive-branch legal interpretation to active litigation. In May, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates concluded that the Presidential Records Act is likely constitutional and preliminarily ordered numerous Executive Branch offices and officials—though not the President and Vice President themselves—to comply with it. The government has appealed that ruling to the D.C. Circuit.What constitutional authority, if any, does Congress have to regulate the creation, preservation, ownership, and disclosure of presidential records? Join us as our panel examines this question, the ongoing litigation, and the broader implications for congressional power, executive privilege, and the separation of powers.
Featuring:

Michael Edney, Partner, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Christopher Fonzone, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Reiss Center on Law and Security, NYU School of Law
(Moderator) Zack Smith, Senior Legal Fellow, Courts and the Constitution, Legal Policy Center, The Heritage Foundation

The 1963 Supreme Court case United States v. Philadelphia National Bank established a "structural presumption": if a merger creates a single entity controlling 30% or more of a market, it is legally presumed to lessen competition in violation of Section 7 of the Clayton Act, U.S. antitrust law’s merger statute. U.S. federal and state antitrust enforcers challenging mergers have relied on this presumption for more than half a century. Certain state attorneys general have most recently utilized this presumption to argue that a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery would control roughly 27% or more of key theatrical distribution and basic cable markets and hence be anti-competitive.

Defenders of the presumption argue that it provides predictability to businesses and gives regulators an efficient way to identify and prevent harmful mergers. Critics charge that the presumption relies on an outdated economic theory and triggers a heavy burden shift for businesses based on thin or speculative evidence of potential harm. Join our panel of experts as they explore the future of the Philadelphia National Bank presumption and whether it will remain in place if the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery or other similar cases reach the Supreme Court.
Featuring:

Debbie Feinstein, Partner, Arnold & Porter
Hon. Douglas H. Ginsburg, Senior Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Prof. Herbert Hovenkamp, James G. Dinan University Professor, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Rahul Rao, Antitrust Partner, White & Case
Prof. D. Daniel Sokol, Professor of Law and Business, USC Gould School of Law and Marshall School of Business
(Moderator) Michael F. Murray, Partner, Litigation Department, Paul Hastings

In Louisiana v. Callais, a divided Supreme Court narrowed the circumstances in which states may use race as a factor in drawing election districts. The Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Alito, held that compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can justify the use of race in redistricting only when the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that the State intentionally denied minority voters an equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates because of race. Justice Kagan penned a dissent, which argued that the majority opinion “renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”Callais has already begun to shape litigation elsewhere. A pending federal complaint against the Denver Public School Board alleges that the board violated Section 2 and the Fifteenth Amendment by deliberately redrawing two of its seven districts to preserve Black and Hispanic electoral majorities, with board members explaining the effort in terms of ensuring that students are “represented by people who look like them.” Supporters of the board’s decision argue that shared racial background should be a meaningful consideration in political representation. Critics counter that this reasoning revives the same race-based logic the Constitution forbids, and that voters and candidates should be evaluated as individuals rather than as members of racial groups.Callais has also shaped important policy decisions. In June, the Office of Legal Counsel relied on Callais to conclude that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Title VII guidelines were unconstitutional because they contemplated liability based on disparate effects alone, without regard to an employer’s likely intent, and pressured employers to engage in race-based decision making.Join us for a webinar examining the downstream effects of the Callais decision and what it may mean for redistricting disputes like the Denver case and others like it.
Featuring:

Michael A. Carvin, Former Partner, Jones Day
Prof. Jeffrey M. Wice, Adjunct Professor of Law; Director, N.Y. Census and Redistricting Institute, New York Law School
(Moderator) Hon. Linda Chavez, Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity

When an AI system fabricates damaging claims about a real person, is the AI company liable for defamation? Just last week, in Keene v. Google, a federal court confronted this question for the first time, holding that allegedly false Google AI search summaries could be viewed as potentially defamatory factual assertions – and that “actual malice” on Google’s part could be shown if Google’s AI kept outputting the falsehoods after plaintiff had expressly alerted Google about this. In July, a Delaware state trial court likewise allowed conservative activist Robby Starbuck’s defamation suit against Google to proceed.What do these early decisions mean for defamation law in the age of large language models? Join us as we discuss when AI-generated falsehoods may become actionable, how traditional libel doctrines apply to AI outputs, and what these cases could mean for AI developers, users, and the future of online information.Featuring:Prof. Lyrissa Lidsky, Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Eminent Scholar Chair in US Constitutional Law, University of Florida Levin College of LawProf. Eugene Volokh, Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law(Moderator) Shlomo Klapper, CEO & Founder, Learned Hand

When an AI system fabricates damaging claims about a real person, is the AI company liable for defamation? Just last week, in Keene v. Google, a federal court confronted this question for the first time, holding that allegedly false Google AI search summaries could be viewed as potentially defamatory factual assertions – and that “actual malice” on Google’s part could be shown if Google’s AI kept outputting the falsehoods after plaintiff had expressly alerted Google about this. In July, a Delaware state trial court likewise allowed conservative activist Robby Starbuck’s defamation suit against Google to proceed.
What do these early decisions mean for defamation law in the age of large language models? Join us as we discuss when AI-generated falsehoods may become actionable, how traditional libel doctrines apply to AI outputs, and what these cases could mean for AI developers, users, and the future of online information.
Featuring:

Prof. Lyrissa Lidsky, Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Eminent Scholar Chair in US Constitutional Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Prof. Eugene Volokh, Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
(Moderator) Shlomo Klapper, CEO & Founder, Learned Hand

In September 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia preliminarily enjoined the EPA from sending four Clean Air Act waivers to Congress for potential repeal under the Congressional Review Act (CRA). These waivers have allowed California to enact its own vehicle emission standards. Judge Beryl Howell held the CRA's bar on judicial review does not reach an agency's threshold determination that its action is a "rule," and found California had standing to challenge the EPA's June 2026 press release announcing it was transmitting the rules to Congress. What may happen next in this case; and what does this litigation suggest about the limits on using the CRA as a deregulatory tool? Join us for a panel discussing the decision and the broader state of play on CRA issues under the current administration.
Featuring:

Michael Buschbacher, Managing Partner, Boyden Gray PLLC
Andrew Ceonzo, Counsel to U.S. Senator Schmitt and the Senate Judiciary Committee
(Moderator) Daniel M. Flores, Senior Counsel, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives