Episode 7 of the University of Miami School of Law's Constitutional Crisis Seminar features Thomas Berry , director of the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor in chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation and clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

While at Cato, Mr. Berry co-authored a Supreme Court amicus brief in a case involving whether “disparaging” terms can be trademarked, that George Will described as “amusing.” The case concerned whether the name of an Asian American rock band, The Slants, could be trademarked. Berry’s team titled its submission, "Brief of the Cato Institute and a Basket of Deplorable People and Organizations." In that case, the Supreme Court, per Justice Alito, liberalized trademark registration law by holding that the disparagement exception in the Lanham Act was facially unconstitutional.

His academic work has appeared in NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, Washington and Lee Law Review Online, and Federalist Society Review. His popular writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Law Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, National Review Online, and The Hill Online. He has testified before the U.S. Senate, and his work has been cited by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Mr. Berry holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he was a senior editor on the Stanford Law and Policy Review and a Bradley Student Fellow in the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. He graduated with a B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe.

During law school, Mr. Berry interned at both Cato and the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm in Arlington, Virginia.

Mr. Berry is widely acknowledged as a leading authority on the Vacancies act which is the focus of this talk today.