Claremont Institute Constitution Day Symposium

2022 Constitution Day Symposium

Saturday, September 17, 2022
12:00 pm – 5:30 pm PT

Pacifica Christian School
1499 Monrovia Ave
Newport Beach, CA


The Claremont Institute invites you to celebrate Constitution Day with Dr. John C. Eastman and our Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. We will be commemorating the 235th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution with panel discussions addressing some of the most pressing threats to our constitutional system. Our program will also feature a discussion with the recipient of this year’s Reagan Jurisprudence Award, Judge Jim Ho.

Program Schedule

11:30 am – 12:00 pm – Registration

12:00 pm – 12:45 pm – Welcome Brunch

12:45 pm – 1:00 pm – Opening Remarks

Ryan P. Williams
President, Claremont Institute

John C. Eastman
Founding Director, Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
Board Member, Claremont Institute

1:00 pm – 1:30 pm – Reagan Jurisprudence Award Presentation

Judge Jim Ho
Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
“Fair Weather Originalism: Judges, Umpires, and the Fear of Being Booed”

1:30 pm – 2:45 pm – First Panel:
Landmark Supreme Court Rulings of 2022

John Eastman
Founding Director, Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
Board Member, Claremont Institute
“The Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence’s Strategic Goals on the March at the Supreme Court”

David Forte
Professor of Law, Cleveland State University
Visiting Professor & Fellow, James Madison Program, Princeton University
Dobbs and the Future of Abortion in America”

Anthony T. Caso
Senior Legal Fellow, Claremont Institute
West Virginia v. EPA and Taming the Bureaucracy”

3:00 pm – 4:15 pm – Second Panel:
The Criminalization of Political Differences and “The 65 Project”

Josh Hammer
Newsweek Opinion Editor, Host of “The Josh Hammer Show”
“The State-Corporate Assault on Freedom of Thought and Speech”

Jeff Clark
Senior Fellow, Center for Renewing America
“The Role of the Department of Justice and the FBI”

John Eastman
Founding Director, Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
Board Member, Claremont Institute
“Our Authoritarian Moment and Criminalizing Politics”

Alex Kozinski
Former Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
“Doxxing as Attorney Intimidation: 1stand 6th Amendment Implications”

4:15 pm – 4:30 pm – Closing Remarks

John C. Eastman
Founding Director, Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
Board Member, Claremont Institute

4:30 pm – 5:30 pm – Cocktail Reception

Panelists

Ryan P. Williams is the President of the Claremont Institute and Publisher of the Claremont Review of Books and The American Mind. Prior to becoming president in 2017, Mr. Williams held positions at the Claremont Institute as Chief Operating Officer, Director of Programs, Director of Special Projects, Assistant Director of Programs, and Research Assistant. He has taught American politics and political philosophy as an adjunct professor at California State University, San Bernardino, and Cal Poly Pomona. A 2004 Publius Fellow of the Claremont Institute, Mr. Williams holds a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Hillsdale College and an M.A. in Politics from Claremont Graduate University. A native of Southern California, he was born in Santa Monica before moving to Encinitas in north county San Diego. He now resides in Claremont with his wife Amelia and their son.

Dr. John C. Eastman is a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute and founding Director of the Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm. He was a member of the law faculty at the Chapman University Fowler School of Law from 1999 to January 2021, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He was the Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and served as the School’s Dean from 2007 to 2010. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as Chairman of the Federalist Society’s Federalism & Separation of Powers practice group and is a member of the board of directors of the Public Interest Legal Foundation and The Claremont Institute. Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis.

Judge James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide. He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries. He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.

Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government. On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn. At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel. He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.

His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.

In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty. He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader. He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.

Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999. Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp.

David F. Forte is Emeritus Professor of Law at Cleveland State University. He has the rare distinction of twice being award a Fulbright Distinguished Chair first at the University of Trento, and recently at the University of Warsaw. In 2016 and 2017, Professor Forte was Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics. During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation both for Congress and for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. He has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions, and has published six books and over 200 law review articles and essays. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.

Anthony T. (Tom) Caso is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Claremont Institute. He recently retired as a Clinical Professor of Law at Chapman University, Fowler School of Law, where he led the Constitutional Jurisprudence Clinic for 15 years. Tom is also a litigator and has argued at every level of the state and federal courts, including the California and United States Supreme Court. As part of his duties with the Claremont Institute, Tom represents Claremont’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence on friend of the court briefs filed in the United States Supreme Court. Tom’s briefs have been cited in the past by Supreme Court Justices in their opinions, including Justice Thomas and Justice Alito.

Josh Hammer is the opinion editor for Newsweek, a research fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation, counsel and policy advisor for the Internet Accountability Project, a syndicated columnist through “Creators,” and a contributing editor for “Anchoring Truths.” A frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal, and cultural issues, Josh is a constitutional attorney by training. He hosts “The Josh Hammer Show,” a Newsweek podcast, and co-hosts the Edmund Burke Foundation’s “NatCon Squad” podcast. Josh is a college campus speaker through Young America’s Foundation and a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society. Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Josh worked at a large law firm and clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Josh has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute. Josh graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Miami, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.

Jeff Clark is the former President Trump-selected and Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General of the Environment & Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Justice Department (2018-2021). From 2020-2021, Jeff was also named and simultaneously served as the former Acting Assistant Attorney General of DOJ’s Civil Division (2020-2021). In this capacity, by the end of 2020, Jeff was responsible for supervising approximately 1,400 lawyers at DOJ. He also served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the DOJ Environment Division from 2001-2005 during the Bush 43 Administration. For most of his career, from 2005-2018, Mr. Clark was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, based on Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of Harvard College, the University of Delaware, and the Georgetown University Law Center. 

Alex Kozinski served as United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals from 1985 to 2017, including as the court’s chief judge from 2007 to 2014.  From 1982 to 1985 he served as the first chief judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims.  Judge Kozinski has written countless opinions on constitutional law issues including the First, Second and Fourth Amendments and the Takings Clause.  He has authored numerous articles in the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Stanford Law Review and other academic journals, as well as in popular publications such as the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Forbes and The New Republic, writing on a wide range of subjects from criminal justice reform to the finer points of snowboarding.

Purchase Tickets

Event Sponsors

The Claremont Institute extends warm thanks to our 2022 Constitution Day Sponsors:

Robert De Pietro, Distinguished Sponsor
Laird Coatings Corporation, Distinguished Sponsor
Larry T. Smith, Distinguished Sponsor

Gordon and Vacharee Fell, Sponsors
John Robert Renner, Sponsor