Constitution Week Lunch Discussion:
Federalism in the Age of COVID-19
Panelists:
Constitution Week Lecture
Constitution Week Lunch Discussion:
Public Health v. Individual Rights
Panelists:
What Exactly is Impeachment?
Panelists:
Dr. Rachel Bitecofer, Lecturer and Assistant Director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University (CNU) and senior fellow at the Niskanen Center
Constitution Week Lunch Discussion:
The Politicization of the Federal Bureaucracy
Panelists:
Constitution Week Lunch Discussion:
Times Talk: NASCAR, Mississippi & The Confederate Flag
Supreme Court Review Panel
Panelists:
Anil Kalhan, Drexel University Kline School of Law
Fred Smith Jr. is associate professor at Emory University School of Law. He is a scholar of the federal judiciary, constitutional law, and local government. In 2019, he was named the law school’s Outstanding Professor of the Year.
Smith's research focuses on accountability, federal jurisdiction, and state sovereignty. His work has appeared in Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, New York University Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, among other academic journals.
In a range of volunteer capacities, Smith promotes equity and social justice. He serves on the board of Invest Atlanta, which serves as the economic and community development authority of City of Atlanta. He also serves on the Atlanta’s Mayoral LGBTQ Advisory Board; the national board of Lambda Legal; the national board of Civil Rights Corps; and the LGBT Advisory Board of Historic Atlanta. Smith was a founding member of BeltLine Rail Now, which advocates for transit on critical corridors around the city. He also served as an inaugural advisory board member for the Harvard Debate Council Diversity Project, which annually trains black Atlanta youth in critical thinking and public speaking.
Education: JD, Stanford Law School; BA (with honors), Harvard College.
Dr. Andrew Sanders holds a PhD in Politics, International Studies and Philosophy and a MA FROM Queen's University Belfast and a BSc in Social and Management Science from Edinburgh Napier University. His research focuses on terrorism and political violence, state responses to insurgency, and the intentional dimension to conflict. He is the author of Inside the IRA:Dissident Republicans and the War for Ligitimacy (Edinburgh, 2011) and co-authored Times and Troubles: Britiain's War in Northern Ireland (Edinburgh, 2012) with Ian S. Wood. His third book, the Long Peace Process: The United States of America and the Northern Ireland Conflict is forthcoming with Liverpool University Press. He has published several articles on topics such as international support for terrorism, the role of diaspora in conflict, the concept of minimum force in military operations,and transatlantic relations.
He teaches course on Comparative Politics, International Relations, Terrorism, Political Research and US and Texas Government.
Nicholas Creel is currently an Assistant Professor of Business Law at Georgia College. His research interests include religion and politics, international law, and constitutional law. His academic accomplishments include a recently completed PhD in political science from Texas Tech University, a JD from the University of Dayton, and an LLM in international and comparative law from St. Mary's University.
Eboni Haynes is an experienced public health and health policy professional with demonstrated competence in technical assistance provision, program and project management, grant writing and management, and interdisciplinary collaboration within health systems, nonprofit organizations, municipal/county/state governments, and research institutions.
She is a strong research professional with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Health Services Policy & Management.
Dean C. Copelan is a lecturer of business law and ethics at Georgia College. Prior to coming to Georgia College, he served as an attorney at Spivey, Pope, Green and Greer in Macon, practicing in the areas of wealth management and probate and estate administration.
Dean earned his undergraduate degree in accounting from Georgia College and State University in 1991. He received his J.D. from the Walter F. George School of Law in 1994, where he was a member of the Mercer Law Review and Brainerd Currie Honor Society. After attending the School of Law, Dean attended the University of Miami, where he earned an LL.M. in estate planning. Upon finishing his education, Dean became an associate attorney at The Bowden Law Firm in Atlanta, and then at James, Bates, Pope & Spivey in Macon. He also served as Vice President and Senior Trust Advisor at Wachovia Bank, as First Vice President and Estate Settlement Manager at SunTrust Bank, and Assistant General Counsel at Bank of America.
Nicholas Creel is currently an Assistant Professor of Business Law at Georgia College. His research interests include religion and politics, international law, and constitutional law. His academic accomplishments include a recently completed PhD in political science from Texas Tech University, a JD from the University of Dayton, and an LLM in international and comparative law from St. Mary's University.
Dr. Rachel Bitecofer is a lecturer and assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University (CNU) and senior fellow at the Niskanen Center. Rachel Bitecofer is a nationally recognized election forecaster and in addition to her groundbreaking election analysis and election forecasting research on the presidential and congressional elections, she conducts pro-democracy research. Rachel’s work appears in a variety of the nation’s leading media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, MarketWatch, The Guardian, The BBC, MSNBC, Sky News, CBC, and Realtime w Bill Maher. She’s been a guest on prominent and diverse podcasts including Rumble with Michael Moore, The Michael Steele Podcast, Cape Up with Jonathan Capehart, The New Yorker, and the The Bulwark Podcast, to name just a few. She is the host of The Election Whisperer, a data-based politics & elections show she describes as an “election nerd Disneyland for wonks with a good sense of humor” and serves as a senior adviser to The Lincoln Project.
Dr. Gene Straughan is a professor and Director of the Justice Studies Program at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. He has won numerous awards for teaching such courses as American National Politics, State and Local Government, Law and Society, Political Philosophy, Constitutional Law, Civil Liberties and Civil Rights, First Amendment Law, Native American Law, and International Law. He has taught and coached undergraduate mock trial and moot court teams. He has also served as an agency program evaluator for Community Prosecution and Law Enforcement grants, funded by the United States Department of Justice.
Sam Rauschenberg serves as Vice President, Data Strategy at Achieve Atlanta, a nonprofit that helps Atlanta Public Schools students to access, afford, and earn postsecondary credentials. Sam is responsible for leveraging data and predictive analytics to inform program strategy and help increase the number of graduates who earn a postsecondary credential. Prior to joining Achieve Atlanta in January 2018, he served as Deputy Director for Research, Policy, and Accountability with the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement for five years. In this role, he oversaw the agency’s data and research agenda to inform state-level education policy decisions and provide accessible education data to Georgia stakeholders. Rauschenberg holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Georgia College and a master’s degree in public policy from Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. He started his career as a high school math teacher in the Recovery School District in New Orleans through the teachNOLA Fellows Program.
Anil Kalhan is a Professor of Law at the Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law. He currently is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where he also was in residence in 2015 and 2017. He also is an Affiliated Faculty Member at the University of Pennsylvania South Asia Center and a Faculty Advisory Board member for the Drexel University Center for Mobilities Research and Policy. From 2015 to 2018, he served as chair of the New York City Bar Association’s International Human Rights Committee.
Professor Kalhan’s scholarly and teaching interests lie in the areas of immigration law, U.S. and comparative constitutional law, international human rights law, privacy and surveillance, criminal law, and law and South Asian studies. His scholarship has appeared in publications including the Columbia Law Review Sidebar, Columbia Journal of Asian Law, Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Maryland Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, UC Davis Law Review, UCLA Law Review Discourse, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, and edited volumes published by Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Thomas "Tom" J. Mew’s practice covers a broad range of employment law matters including both individual and class action wage-and-hour, discrimination, and harassment litigation, as well as in arbitration and mediation. He is also an advisor on employment contracts, releases, and restrictive covenant issues. He has represented clients at all levels in state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court (Bostock v. Clayton County, GA, 140 S. Ct. 1731, 590 U.S. ___ (2020)).
Tom is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia, School of Law and was a member of the school’s national championship-winning moot court team. Following law school, Tom clerked for Judge Herschel Franks of the Tennessee Court of Appeals and for the Honorable Harold L. Murphy of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Before joining Buckley Beal, Tom practiced law for many years at Rogers & Hardin LLP.
Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Prior to returning to Harvard, he taught at Stanford Law School, where he founded the Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.
Cited by The New Yorker as “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era,” Lessig has focused much of his career on law and technology, especially as it affects copyright. His current work addresses “institutional corruption”—relationships which, while legal, weaken public trust in an institution—especially as that affects democracy.
Lessig holds a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge University, and a JD from Yale.
Matt Roessing is a Lecturer in Legal Studies at UGA’s Terry College of Business, where he teaches the legal aspects of business, real estate, and international trade. Matt taught business law at Georgia College from 2012-2017 and won several teaching awards, including the business school’s Students’ Choice Award and the university-wide Excellence in Teaching Award. He is a member of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business and recent winner of its annual Master Teacher Competition. While at Georgia College, Matt started the U.S. Supreme Court Review and helped expand Constitution Day into a week of cross-disciplinary events. Matt previously worked in the Washington, D.C. office of Arnold & Porter LLP and now runs his own law firm in Milledgeville, where he represents local business owners and serves on the board of the Chamber of Commerce. A self-professed “SCOTUS nerd,” Matt follows the Court and his discussions of its decisions have been featured on Georgia Public Broadcasting, Macon’s LawCall, and Georgia College’s WRGC.
