The 2024 Elections and the Future of the Supreme Court with Edward Whelan

Legal commentator Edward Whelan will present to us us on "The 2024 Elections and the Future of the Supreme Court." Ed will explore how the upcoming elections could shape the future of the Court and its impact on key legal issues. Would a Republican victory help preserve or further solidify the conservative majority on the Court, on issues including as abortion, religious liberty, and administrative law? On the other hand, in the event of a Democratic win, how would the Court's ideological balance shift? And what about recent movements for court reforms like expanding the number of justices?  There are high stakes ahead for the Court. 

When: Wednesday, November 20, 2024 at 11:45 a.m. (registration), 12:00 Noon (lunch)

Where: First Floor Conference Room, 2040 Main Street, 1st Floor, Irvine, CA.
(Please validate your parking ticket in the lobby before or after entering the venue.)

Cost: $30/members, $35/non-members, $20/students, for lunch and 1 hour of MCLE credit (the Federalist Society is a California State Bar approved provider of MCLE).

RSVP and Pay: To RSVP and pay by credit card, please visit the Federalist Society event page here.

To pay by cash or check at the door, please send an RSVP to Tim Kowal at OCFedSocPresident@gmail.com and make checks payable to “The Federalist Society.”

*** Please email us if you have any dietary concerns. ***

 About Ed Whelan:

Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.

Mr. Whelan directs EPPC’s program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process. As a contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog, he has been a leading commentator on nominations to the Supreme Court and the lower courts and on issues of constitutional law. He has written essays and op-eds for leading newspapers—including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—opinion journals, and academic symposia and law reviews. The National Law Journal has named Mr. Whelan among its “Champions and Visionaries” in the practice of law in D.C.

How Property Rights Can Solve the Housing Crisis, with James Burling

Join us for a conversation with James Burling of Pacific Legal Foundation, discussing his latest book, Nowhere to Live, which explores the critical housing crisis in America. Jim is a renowned property rights advocate and will offer ideas how respecting property rights can help solve the housing crisis. 

When: Wednesday, October 9, 2024 at 11:45 a.m. (registration), 12:00 Noon (lunch)

Where: First Floor Conference Room, 2040 Main Street, 1st Floor, Irvine, CA.
(Please validate your parking ticket in the lobby before or after entering the venue.)

Cost: $30/members, $35/non-members, $20/students, for lunch and 1 hour of MCLE credit (the Federalist Society is a California State Bar approved provider of MCLE).

RSVP and Pay: To RSVP and pay by credit card, please visit the Federalist Society event page here.

To pay by cash or check at the door, please send an RSVP to Tim Kowal at OCFedSocPresident@gmail.com and make checks payable to “The Federalist Society.”

*** Please email us if you have any dietary concerns. ***

Before becoming an attorney, James had been a productive member of society working as an exploration geologist in the late 1970s throughout the southwestern United States. However, after several years of dealing with irrational government bureaucrats and environmental policies untethered from reality, James decided that what the world needs is more lawyers — if they are willing to fight for rationality in regulatory regimes, property rights, and liberty.

James attended the University of Arizona College of Law in Tucson, where he served as an editor for the Law Review and received a J.D. degree in 1983. He had previously received a Masters degree in geological sciences from Brown University and an undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in New York. James received the Professional Achievement Award from the University of Arizona Alumni Association in 2018.

James has worked with Pacific Legal Foundation since 1983, litigating cases from Alaska to Florida. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group’s Executive Committee, a member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, and an honorary member of Owners Counsel of America, an organization comprised of eminent domain attorneys who represent property owners. The Owners Counsel awarded James its Crystal Eagle award in 2013. In 2022, James was awarded the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize at the William & Mary College of Law. The prize is awarded annually to an individual whose work has advanced the cause of property rights and has contributed to the overall awareness of the important role property rights occupy in the broader scheme of individual liberty.

In 2001, James successfully argued a major property rights case, Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, before the United States Supreme Court, a case which affirmed that rights in regulated property do not disappear when land is bought and sold. He has written extensively on all aspects of property rights and environmental law and frequently speaks on these subjects throughout the nation.

When James is not suing the government he enjoys skiing faster than he should, bicycling, hiking, swimming, and spending quality time with his wife, family, and grandchild.

Mr. Burling’s book Nowhere to Live: The Hidden Story of America’s Housing Crisis will be available on August 13, 2024.

James is a member of the bar in the states of Alaska and California.

Deroy Murdock: The Case for Color Neutrality

After decades' of work to prohibit racial discrimination through Title VI and Title VII in federal law, and the Fair Employment and Housing Act, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, and Proposition 209 here in California, recent programs have pushed back. At the U.S. government’s Sandia Laboratory in New Mexico, for example, employees were forced into re-education sessions on the basis of their race and sex. Does it matter that this discrimination disfavors white men? 

Fox News Contributor Deroy Murdock will make "The Case for Color Neutrality." 

When: Thursday, September 5, 2024 at 11:45 a.m. (registration), 12:00 Noon (lunch)

Where: First Floor Conference Room, 2040 Main Street, 1st Floor, Irvine, CA.
(Please validate your parking ticket in the lobby before or after entering the venue.)

Cost: $30/members, $35/non-members, $20/students, for lunch and 1 hour of MCLE credit (the Federalist Society is a California State Bar approved provider of MCLE).

RSVP and Pay: To RSVP and pay by credit card, please visit the Federalist Society event page here.

To pay by cash or check at the door, please send an RSVP to Tim Kowal at OCFedSocPresident@gmail.com and make checks payable to “The Federalist Society.”

*** Please email us if you have any dietary concerns. ***

New York political commentor Deroy Murdock is a Fox News Contributor, a Contributing Editor with National Review Online, an emeritus Media Fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University; and a Senior Fellow with the Atlas Network, which supports and connects some 500 free-market think tanks in the USA and some 95 countries world-wide. Mr. Murdock’s weekly column — “This Opinion Just In…” — appears in the New York Post, the Washington Times, the New Hampshire Union-Leader, and other newspapers across America. He has appeared on radio shows across America and presents commentaries on Fox News Radio’s podcast, The Rundown. He is a veteran of the 1980 and 1984 Reagan for President campaigns and Steve Forbes’ 2000 White House bid. 

As a popular public speaker, he has lectured or debated at the Cato Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations; Harvard Medical School, the Heritage Foundation; the National Academy of Sciences; Dartmouth, Stanford, and Tulane universities; and various fora, from Bogotá to Buenos Aires to Budapest. He is a native of Los Angeles, a graduate of Georgetown University, and a resident of Manhattan, where he earned an MBA from New York University. His program included a semester of study at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Deroy Murdock hopes that someday the free society will bring him — and every American — more leisure time to experience fine dining, motion pictures, skiing, live music, and the priceless joys of family, friends, and loved ones.