Rod Smolla is a Professor of Law at Vermont Law and Graduate School, in South Royalton, Vermont. He was previously President of Vermont Law and Graduate School. He was Dean and Professor of Law at the Delaware Law School of Widener University, in Wilmington, Delaware. He is the former President of Furman University, where he served from 2010 to 2013. He was previously Dean of the School of Law at Washington and Lee University, and the Roy L. Steinheimer Professor of Law at Washington and Lee. Prior to that he was the Dean and Allen Professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, and the Arthur B. Hanson Professor of Law at the College of William and Mary, Marshall-Wythe School of Law. From 1988 to 1996 he was Director of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law at William and Mary. Smolla is an active litigator. He has served as lead counsel presenting argument in state and federal courts throughout the nation, including the Supreme Court of the United States. He was the principal lawyer who argued the First Amendment and defamation law issues on behalf of Dominion Voting, in its high-profile case against Fox News, resulting in a $787.5 million settlement for Dominion. Smolla is the author of five treatises published by Thomson Reuters: Law of Defamation; Smolla and Nimmer on Freedom of Speech; Rights and Liabilities in Media Content: Internet, Broadcast, and Print; Law of Lawyer Advertising; and Federal Civil Rights Acts. He is co-author of two law school casebooks, Constitutional Law: Structure and Rights in our Federal System (with William Banks and Daan Braveman), and The First Amendment: A Contemporary Approach (with Alan Garfield). He is also the author of over 100 scholarly articles, and a frequent author of books for general audiences, including Confessions of a Free Speech Lawyer: Charlottesville and the Politics of Hate (Cornell University Press 2020). His book The Constitution Goes to College (New York University Press) deals with constitutional principles and ideas that have shaped American higher education. His book Free Speech in an Open Society (Alfred A. Knopf 1992) won the William O. Douglas Award as the year’s best monograph on freedom of expression. He was the Editor of A Year in the Life of the Supreme Court (Duke University Press, 1995), which won an ABA Silver Gavel Award. His book Suing the Press: Libel, the Media, and Power (Oxford University Press 1986) won the ABA Silver Gavel Award Certificate of Merit. He is also the author of Jerry Falwell v. Larry Flynt: The First Amendment on Trial (St. Martin’s Press 1988), and Deliberate Intent: A Lawyer Tells the True Story of Murder by the Book (Crown Publishers 1999), which describes Smolla’s success advocacy in the notorious Hit Man case, in which he successfully represented the families of three murder victims in a suit against the publisher of a murder instruction manual used by a hit man for instructions in carrying out the murders. The book was made into a television movie by Fox and the FX Cable Network.

Alan Garfield is a distinguished professor at Delaware Law School. He received his Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Brandeis University, and his Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law, where he was a member of the UCLA Law Review and the Order of the Coif (top 10%). Prior to joining the Delaware Law faculty, Professor Garfield worked for three years in the litigation department of Weil, Gotshal & Manges in New York City. He is licensed to practice in California and New York. Professor Garfield has been honored for his teaching and scholarship. He received the Outstanding Faculty Award on four occasions (2004, 2019, 2021, and 2023) and the Douglas E. Ray Excellence in Faculty Scholarship Award on two (2006 and 2015). Professor Garfield was selected to be the H. Albert Young Fellow in Constitutional Law from 2005 to 2007, and, in 2018, was named a distinguished professor. Professor Garfield has been a visiting professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and Bryn Mawr College and is currently an adjunct professor at Drexel University School of Law. Professor Garfield writes and teaches in the areas of Constitutional Law, Copyright, and Contracts. His scholarship has appeared in numerous journals including the Columbia Law Review Sidebar, the Cornell Law Review, the Washington University Law Review, the Georgia Law Review, and the Florida Law Review. He is the co-author, with Rodney Smolla, of the casebook, THE FIRST AMENDMENT: A CONTEMPORARY APPROACH (West Academic 2024). Professor Garfield has also published op-eds in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Wilmington News Journal, PennLive, and NBC News THINK. Professor Garfield published a column on the Supreme Court in The News Journal from 2009 to 2019. The column, Bench Press, received the Delaware Press Association’s first place award for a personal-opinion column in seven different years, and received a first-place award in a national competition in both 2012 and 2019. Professor Garfield has been quoted in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The News Journal, Fortune, Frontline, and CBS News, and has been interviewed or appeared on WHYY, WDEL, WDDE, KPFA, KQED, Make No Law Podcast, and CSPAN. Professor Garfield was the founder and coordinator of “The First State Celebrates Constitution Day,” a project run in collaboration with The News Journal editors from 2006 to 2020. He also co-founded and is the current administrator for the Delaware Law School Patent Pro Bono Program, which pairs low-income inventors with volunteer attorneys who help the inventors file patent applications. Professor Garfield is a past chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Mass Communication Law. He served on the Board of Directors of the Delaware ACLU from 2006 to 2023 and was the Board President from 2015-2017. Professor Garfield is currently the President of the Jewish Social Policy Action Network Board of Directors.

The Honorable Karoline Mehalchick is a United States District Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. She was appointed by President Joseph Biden and confirmed by the Senate on January 31, 2024. Prior to her appointment as a District Judge, she served as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania for over ten years, having been appointed to that position in July 2013. She also served as Chief Magistrate Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania from January 2020 until the time of her appointment as a District Judge. Prior to entering on duty with the court in 2013, Judge Mehalchick was in private practice, where she represented a broad range of clients in both state and federal trial and appellate courts, including the United States Supreme Court. She is a graduate of the Schreyer Honors College of the Pennsylvania State University (B.S. Geosciences), and the Tulane University School of Law. After graduation, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Trish Corbett, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Lackawanna County. Judge Mehalchick was also an adjunct professor at Marywood University from 2003 until 2012. Judge Mehalchick presides over the Scranton location of the Court-Assisted Re-Entry Program (CARE Court), coordinates the Court’s summer intern program, and sits on the Court’s Prisoner Litigation Settlement Program Committee, a program which she helped establish in early 2015. Judge Mehalchick is a member of the Workplace Conduct Committee of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. She has previously served as a member of the Judicial Conference Codes of Conduct Committee, and on the Magistrate Judges Advisory Group of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. Judge Mehalchick is an active member of the Federal Bar Association, currently serving as National Treasurer and is the nominee for President-Elect of the Association. She is the immediate past Chair of the Judiciary Division and is a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Judge Mehalchick previously served as an FBA Third Circuit Vice President for five years, on the national Board of Directors for three years, as a judicial profiles editor for The Federal Lawyer, and is a past president of the Middle District of Pennsylvania Chapter. Judge Mehalchick is also active in the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession and is a past president of the Younger Lawyers Division of the Lackawanna Bar Association. In addition to her work with the court and with the Federal Bar Association, Judge Mehalchick participates in weekly Scholar Exchanges through the National Constitution Center, leading middle and high school students in discussions about constitutional issues and civil discourse. Outside of the legal community, Judge Mehalchick is Vice President of Production for the Ballet Theatre of Scranton.