2025 District Conference

Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.

Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.

Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.

Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” A native New Yorker and hopeless Mets fan, Vladeck lives in the District with his wife, Karen (Founder and Managing Partner of Risepoint Search Partners); their daughters, Madeleine and Sydney; and their eleven-year-old pug, Roxanna.

As a researcher, author, and top advisor to many global leaders & managers, Dr. Arin N. Reeves offers expertise and insights on a wide range of leadership and workplace culture topics.

Arin is intellectually voracious and committed to exploring diverse, and often contrarian, perspectives in her research and writing. She is the best-selling author of The Next IQ, One Size Never Fits All, and Smarter Than A Lie. Her latest book, In Charge: The Energy Management Guide for Badass Women Who Are Tired of Being Tired, was released in March 2022. For more information, visit arinreeves.com

Arin has designed and led comprehensive research projects on topics including gender equity, LGBTQIA diversity, racial/ethnic diversity, cultural integration, implicit bias, transformational leadership, energy management, and working through generational differences.

She is the founder and managing director of the research and advisory firm Nextions, which specializes in workplace culture change. Additionally, Arin created The JEDI Collective, a public interest initiative dedicated to advancing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion globally.

Arin began her career as a practicing attorney. She then earned her doctorate in sociology at Northwestern University, where she has served as an Adjunct Professor teaching classes on law and society.

Andrew Mergen is a Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic. Prior to joining the Harvard Law School faculty, Andrew Mergen served in the Appellate Section of the Environment & Natural Resources Division (ENRD) at the United States Department of Justice. Professor Mergen began his career at the Justice Department in the Honors Program and concluded his career as Chief of ENRD’s Appellate Section. He has presented oral arguments in all 13 federal courts of appeals, including two en banc courts, and before several state intermediate and supreme courts. He has also worked on over a dozen merits cases in the Supreme Court of the United States. In addition, in 2009, Professor Mergen assisted the Office of White House Counsel on the confirmation of the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. During his career at the Justice Department, Professor Mergen received the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service three times. He also received ENRD’s Muskee-Chafee Award, honoring his work’s significant contribution to protecting the environment.

Before entering clinical teaching, Professor Mergen taught at several law schools including, Harvard Law School (Advanced Environmental Law), the University of Michigan Law School (Natural Resources Law) and the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii-Manoa (Administrative Law). Professor Mergen has written about federal water rights in “A Misplaced Sensitivity: The Draft Opinions in Wyoming v. United States” (68 Colo. L. Rev. 683 (1997), with Sylvia F. Liu); energy development on public lands in “Surface Tension: The Problem of Federal Private Split Estates” (33 Land & Water L. Rev. 419 (1998)); climate change and the Endangered Species Act in “The Role of Climate Change in ESA Listing Decisions” (53 Rocky Mt. Min. L. Fdn. 67 (2016), with Murray Feldman) and the accommodation of Native American sacred sites on federal land in “Finding the Path Forward for Indigenous Sacred and Cultural Spaces on Federal Public Land,” 68 Nat. Resources & Energy L. Inst. 32-1 (2022). Professor Mergen is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin—Madison and the George Washington University Law School.

Wes Williams Jr. was born and raised in northern Nevada in the small town of Schurz. He graduated from Yerington High School. He then earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering with emphases in construction management and structural design from Stanford University in 1988 and his Juris Doctorate from the University of California, Davis School of Law in 1994. He is admitted to the State Bars of Nevada (1998), Colorado (1994 – currently inactive status) and Arizona (1996 – currently inactive status). He has represented clients in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, state and federal district courts of Nevada, Arizona and Colorado; in addition to numerous tribal courts and intertribal courts of appeals.

Wes began practicing law in Northern Nevada in 1998 with the firm Williams & Emm, LLC. and established the Law Offices of Wes Williams Jr., P.C. in 2002.

Mr. Williams has served as a Tribal Court judge and/or Tribal Appellate Court judge for numerous tribes throughout the Western United States. He has also helped establish tribal court systems for tribes in California and New York. Mr. Williams’ engineering background has allowed him to serve as an arbitrator for a large design/construction case.

Bret Birdsong is a Professor of Law at the Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where he joined the faculty in 2000. His academic work focuses on conservation, public lands, natural resources, and water law. He is a co-author of a leading casebook on natural resources law, widely adopted in law schools across the country. In addition to his work in academia, Professor Birdsong has extensive experience in government. He served as Deputy Solicitor for Land Resources at the Department of the Interior during the Obama administration, where he worked extensively on sage grouse conservation, the creation and expansion of numerous national monuments, and the design of plans to provide for both renewable energy and habitat conservation on public lands.

Professor Birdsong graduated from Princeton University and University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Before joining the U.S. Department of Justice through the Attorney General’s Honors Program, he clerked for Judge Robert P. Patterson, Jr., on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.