Speakers
Erin Bendily, Ph. D | Vice President for Policy & Strategy at the Pelican Institute
Prior to joining the Pelican Institute, Erin led the Louisiana chapter of Propel America, a non-profit organization that trains and supports young adults as they transition from high school to careers. She also served as the Assistant Superintendent for Policy and Governmental Affairs at the Louisiana Department of Education for nearly ten years, where she coordinated the development of the agency’s policy agenda, served as a liaison to state and federal government agencies and elected officials, and worked to advance the agency’s policy priorities through legislative and regulatory processes. A significant part of that work involved expanding educational choice, strengthening accountability for student outcomes, and preparing students for post-secondary education and careers.
Erin served as education policy advisor to Governor Bobby Jindal from 2008-2010. Prior to his gubernatorial administration, she coordinated the Louisiana congressional delegation’s constituent services response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita while serving as then-Congressman Jindal’s deputy district director. Erin earned a bachelor’s degree in business management from Southeastern Louisiana University, a master’s degree in public administration from Louisiana State University, and Ph.D. in educational leadership and research from LSU.
Stas Moroz | Clinical Assistant Professor of Law at Tulane University
Stanislav (“Stas”) Moroz is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Law with the Women’s Prison Project (WPP), which represents criminalized survivors of intimate partner violence in all stages of criminal proceedings. Through the WPP, student attorneys help survivors who were wrongfully arrested or convicted for actions they took as a result of intimate partner violence gain their freedom. Most WPP clients are survivors who were forced to defend themselves against their abusive partners. Moroz supervises student attorneys in trial court proceedings, post-conviction hearings, and pardon and parole hearings. Moroz also trains and consults with attorneys representing criminalized survivors.
Prior to joining Tulane, Moroz worked as a public defender with the Orleans Public Defenders for nearly six years, serving both as a member the trial division and the special litigation division. As a member of the trial division, Moroz represented thousands of clients on charges ranging from minor municipal violations to second degree murder. As a member of the special litigation division, he led efforts to re-sentence over forty individuals serving life sentences under Louisiana’s habitual offender law. He also worked to end Louisiana’s pervasive practice of holding individuals in jails and prisons after their legal release dates. In addition to these two areas of focus, Moroz assisted trial attorneys with writ applications to Louisiana appellate courts and taught CLEs on sentencing and related matters.
Charles J. Russo, J.D., Ed.D. | Director, Ph.D. Program in Educational Leadership; Research Professor of Law at the University of Dayton
Charles Russo is the Joseph Panzer Chair in Education in the UD School of Education and Health Sciences, Director of its Ph.D. Program, and Research Professor of Law at the UD School of Law. The 1998-99 President of the Education Law Association, and 2002 recipient of its McGhehey (Achievement) Award, Russo has authored or co-authored more than 325 articles in peer-reviewed journals; authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited 81 books, and has more than 1,300 publications focusing on issues in Education Law. He has spoken extensively on issues in Education Law in the United States and other countries. In addition, he edits two academic journals and serves on more than one dozen editorial boards.
Before joining the UD faculty as Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Administration in July 1996, Dr. Russo taught at the University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY) from August 1992 to July 1996 and at Fordham University (New York City) from September 1989 to July 1992. He taught high school for eight and a half years, both prior to and after graduation from law school. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classical Civilization (1972), Juris Doctor Degree (1983), and Doctor of Education degrees in Educational Administration and Supervision (1989) from St, John’s University (New York City). He received a Master of Divinity degree from the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception (Huntington, New York) (1978). He received a Ph.D. Honoris Causa from Potchefstroom University, now the Potchefstroom Campus of Northwest University (Potchefstroom, South Africa) (2004) for his contributions to the field of Education Law.
Laura R. McNeal | Professor of Law at University of Louisville
Dr. Laura McNeal is a multi-platform law and policy analyst and prominent legal scholar who has made a national reputation by providing innovative solutions to today’s social issues through her commentary, numerous scholarly publications, and community outreach. Dr. McNeal has served as a Law & Policy Analyst for the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute at Harvard Law School and currently serves as a Professor of Law at the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law and Summer Lecturer at Columbia University. Dr. McNeal’s articles have appeared in Stanford Law Review Journal (forthcoming), Arizona State Law Review, Georgia State Law Review, and the Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice, among others. Dr. McNeal has lectured widely, and contributes to the national debate on race, law, implicit bias, policing and education through op-eds and national media appearances on networks such as CNN, MSNBC, CBS, C-Span and the Dr. Phil Show. She recently received the prestigious University Distinguished Faculty Award for Scholarship in recognition of her scholarly accomplishments.
Kathrina (Kasia) Szymborski Wolfkot | Senior Counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice
Kathrina (Kasia) Szymborski Wolfkot is senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Judiciary Program, where she works to realize a fair and inclusive judicial system that protects fundamental rights, democratic values, and the rule of law. Wolfkot is also the managing editor of State Court Report, a Brennan Center publication focused on state courts and state constitutional law.
Wolfkot previously worked as an Appellate Attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center. In that role, she primarily challenged inhumane conditions, poor medical care, and violence in jails and prisons across the country. She also litigated issues related to access-to-courts for incarcerated people, excessive sentencing, and wrongful conviction. In particular, she developed a robust state constitutional practice, focusing on state anti-punishment constitutional provisions to protect and expand the rights of people held in carceral facilities. Before entering public service, Wolfkot worked at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, where she managed the firm’s pro bono clemency and parole projects. She secured multiple sentence commutations from New York’s governor for people serving decades-long sentences and obtained parole release for several people sentenced to life in prison. Wolfkot clerked for the Hon. Carl E. Stewart in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Wolfkot is a graduate of The University of Michigan Law School and Skidmore College. Prior to law school, Wolfkot worked as a journalist in Moscow, Russia.
Charles W. “Rocky” Rhodes | Professor of Law at South Texas College of Law Houston
Charles W. “Rocky” Rhodes is Professor of Law and the Charles Weigel II Research Professor of State and Federal Constitutional Law at South Texas College of Law Houston. His teaching and scholarship focuses on the United States Constitution, state constitutions, and federal and state judicial power and procedure. He is the author or co-author of six textbooks and treatises on constitutional law and state constitutional law, including The Texas Constitution in State and Nation: State Constitutional Law in the Federal System, the forthcoming textbook Constitutional Law: Foundations, Interpretations, and Commentaries, and the forthcoming two-volume treatise Rhodes & Usman on State Constitutional Law. His scholarship also includes almost forty treatise supplements, book chapters, and law review articles and essays appearing in journals such as the U.C. Davis Law Review, Harvard Journal on Legislation, Florida Law Review, Cornell Law Review Online, Tulane Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal Online, Florida State University Law Review, and American University Law Review. His writings address a wide variety of constitutional and procedural issues, such as due process rights, free speech protections, state constitutionalism, civil rights, adjudicative jurisdiction, federal court practice, conflict of laws, appellate procedure, and judicial appointments. His scholarship has been cited in forty judicial decisions and hundreds of journal articles. He is interviewed on constitutional and procedural issues by international, national, and statewide outlets such as CNN Newsroom, NPR’s Morning Edition, BBC Radio’s World Business Report, NPR’s Day to Day, and Bloomberg Radio. He is also quoted by newspapers and magazines across the globe, including the Associated Press and Canadian Press as well as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Daily Mirror (U.K.), Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, Washington Times, ABA Journal, BNA U.S. Law Week, American Lawyer, and the Danish Mandag Morgen. He earned his undergraduate degree summa cum laude while on a National Merit Scholarship at Baylor University before enrolling at Baylor Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Baylor Law Review, the President’s Award recipient as the outstanding third-year student, and valedictorian of his graduating law school class. Before becoming a professor, he served as a law clerk and a staff attorney at the Supreme Court of Texas, practiced appellate law at the national law firm now known as Locke Lord LLP, and earned his board certification in Civil Appellate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He remains actively involved in professional practice, testifying before legislatures, speaking to practitioners, and authoring amicus briefs on constitutional and procedural topics.
Julie Murray | Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU State Supreme Court Initiative
Julie Murray is a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, where she co-launched the national organization’s State Supreme Court Initiative (SSCI) in May 2023. In that capacity, Julie litigates a wide range of civil rights and civil liberties issues in state courts around the country.
Before coming to the ACLU, Julie was a litigator at Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), where she brought challenges to restrictions on sexual and reproductive health and education. Julie served as Planned Parenthood’s lead lawyer challenging Texas’s Senate Bill 8—the state’s “bounty hunter” abortion ban—in state and federal court. She also litigated cases around the country involving privacy, due process, equal rights, and free speech claims under federal and state law.
Before PPFA, Julie served as a litigator with Public Citizen Litigation Group, where she worked on a range of cases involving constitutional law, administrative law, and the rights of consumers, workers, and students. She also clerked for Judge Marsha Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and served as a Margaret Fund Fellow at the National Women’s Law Center. Prior to law school, Julie worked at the Urban Institute and Migration Policy Institute, where she focused on qualitative and quantitative social science research.
Julie has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, two state supreme courts, and numerous other appellate and trial courts around the country. In connection with her practice, she has been quoted by national print, online, radio, and television media outlets, including NPR, CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Associated Press, Reuters, Telemundo, Politico, and The Economist.
Julie has served as a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School, where she co-taught a seminar entitled Litigating State Constitutional Rights, and as a Wasserstein Public Interest Advising Fellow at Harvard Law School.
Raised in West Virginia, Julie received her law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from the University of Kentucky, where she was named a national Harry S. Truman Scholar.
John Devlin | Professor of Law at LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center
Professor Devlin was born and raised in upstate New York. Before law school, he worked as a biomedical laboratory assistant, in summer stock theatre, and in national political campaigns, among other jobs. After law school, he clerked for Hon. Eugene Nickerson (E.D.N.Y) and was an associate with the NYC law firm of Kornstein, Veisz & Wexler — a small firm, specializing in commercial litigation.
Professor Devlin joined the LSU faculty in 1986. At the LSU Law Center, he has taught primarily in the fields of constitutional law (federal, state, and comparative); federal civil procedure, administrative law, and employment law. He devotes a significant amount of time working with student organizations (e.g., as advisor to the Law Review, the Moot Court Board and, most recently, the new Public Interest Law Society). In addition, he coached the Law Center National Moot Court team and several other interschool moot court teams. Early writings focused on state constitutional law.
Hon. Guy P. Holdridge | Former Judge of the First Circuit Court of Appeal of Louisiana
Hon. Guy P. Holdridge recently retired from the First Circuit Court of Appeal where he served for nine years. Judge Holdridge previously served as a District Judge of the 23rd Judicial District Court. He served as a district court judge since 1991 and was the chief judge in 1991, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2006, and 2014. Judge Holdridge earned a B.A. Degree from Louisiana State University in 1974 and a J.D. in 1978 from the LSU Law Center where he was a member of the Order of the Coif and the Louisiana Law Review. While in law school, he had two of his articles published in the Law Review. He is a member of the LSU Law Center Hall of Fame.
Judge Holdridge serves on the adjunct faculty of LSU Law Center where he teaches LA Civil Procedure I and II. He is also on the committee for the LSU Trial Advocacy Program. Judge Holdridge is the 2021-2024 editor of the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure published by Thomson Reuters. He is a long-time member of the council of the Louisiana Law Institute and is now serving as the Director of the Institute. He is also a member of the Children’s Code, Child Custody, Expropriation, Prescription, Bail Bonds, Summary Judgment, Civil Procedure, Recusal, and Adult Guardianship Committees of the Law Institute. He is the past reporter of the Expedited Jury Trial Committee, Summary Judgment, and Bail Bonds Committees. While serving as reporter for the Summary Judgment committee, Judge Holdridge oversaw the enactment of the current Code of Civil Procedure article 966 on summary judgments. As reporter of the Bail Bond Committee, he also oversaw the enactment of a new bail bond law. He is also currently serving as the acting reporter for the Criminal Law and Procedure Committee and the reporter for the Code of Civil Procedure committee. He also served for over two terms as past chairman of the Louisiana Certified Shorthand Reporter’s Board. He is a past president of the Louisiana District Judges’ Association, a member of the Executive Committee and a past Chairman of the District Judges “Best Practices Committee”. As the chairman of the Best Practices committee, he led the effort to have Judges Bench Books developed for the trial judges of the state. He was also part of the mentoring program of the District Judges Association. He is the past President of the First Circuit Judges Association. He is also a member and past president of the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Judicial College. Along with Professor Corbett, he is the co-chair of the Judicial College/LADC Torts conference. He also is a frequent speaker at Judicial College programs including its Summer school, Evidence and Procedure and the spring and fall conferences. He is also a member of the Louisiana Supreme Court’s Strategic Planning committee and Jury Instructions Committee. He is also a frequent speaker at the Attorney General’s Program for Justice of the Peace and Constables. Judge Holdridge has also spoken at various LSBA programs including the annual New York seminar, Judges Summer School and CLE programs for the 21st JDC and 23rd JDC bar associations. He is also a yearly speaker for the Young Lawyers of the Baton Rouge summer CLE program. In June of 2018, Judge Holdridge was awarded the Catherine D. Kimball Award for the Advancement of the Administration of Justice presented by the Louisiana Bar Association. He was also awarded the President’s Award by the Baton Rouge Bar Association. In 2020, Judge Holdridge was named a Distinguished Alumnus of the LSU Law Center and in 2021, Judge Holdridge was named the Outstanding Jurist by the Louisiana Bar Foundation.
Helen Hershkoff | Professor of Law at New York University School of Law
Helen Hershkoff is the Herbert M. and Svetlana Wachtell Professor of Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties (formerly the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law 2006–2009) and Co-Director of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program. A member of the NYU faculty since 1995, Professor Hershkoff practiced law for almost two decades as a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; as a staff attorney with The Legal Aid Society of New York; and as an associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1995, her last year as a full-time practitioner, New York Magazine named her one of New York’s best civil rights lawyers.
Professor Hershkoff’s teaching focuses on civil procedure and federal courts. She is co-author, since the Ninth Edition, of the leading casebook in the field, Civil Procedure: Cases and Materials (with Jack H. Friedenthal, Arthur R. Miller, and John E. Sexton), and also has prepared a “compact” edition of the casebook for three- and four-hour courses. She actively engages with pedagogy and her writing includes articles on the teaching of civil procedure. She is a member of the International Association of Procedural Law and a co-editor and a co-author of Civil Litigation in Comparative Context (with Oscar Chase ed. 2007). She also is a member of the author team of the famous “Wright and Miller” Federal Practice and Procedure treatise, concentrating on the volumes involving the United States as a party.
Professor Hershkoff also is a nationally recognized scholar on state constitutions. Her writing has concerned such topics as social and economic rights, state constitutional interpretive method, and the relation between state constitutional norms and common law decision making. She has published widely about state constitutions in journals including the Harvard, Stanford, Fordham, and Rutgers law reviews and chapters in books published by Oxford and Cambridge University presses. In 2011 and 2012, she helped plan and participated in a series of conferences for state court judges organized by the Aspen Institute Justice and Society Program.
Professor Hershkoff also co-directs the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program and an important part of her scholarship focuses on public interest litigation and the role of the courts in effecting social change. With Stephen Loffredo, she is the co-author of The Rights of the Poor (1997) and Getting By: Economic Rights and Legal Protections for People with Low Income (2020). She served as a consultant to the Ford Foundation on its Global Learning Program Initiative, see Many Roads to Justice (McClymont & Golub eds. 2000), and also completed a consultancy to the World Bank, see Transforming Legal Theory in the Light of Practice: The Judicial Application of Social and Economic Rights to Private Orderings, in Courting Social Justice: Judicial Enforcement of Social and Economic Rights in the Developing World (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Professor Hershkoff is a 1973 graduate of Radcliffe-Harvard College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. She earned her J.D. from the Harvard Law School, and a B.A. and an M.A. in Modern History from St. Anne’s College, Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar from 1973–1975 and received her degree with First Class Honors. Professor Hershkoff currently serves on the boards of the Brennan Center for Justice and of the Urban Justice Center, and helped to establish Party for Humanity, Inc., a non-profit organization, www.partyforhumanity.org. She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
Adam Littlestone-Luria | J.D., PhD, Associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
Adam is a litigator at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York. Previously, he was a Furman Academic Scholar at New York University School of Law, and he completed his doctorate in history at the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation focused on the social substructure of legal and political institutions in the Roman Republic. For the next two years, he will be clerking on the Southern District of New York and the 2d Circuit.
His research focuses on federal courts, complex litigation, civil procedure, constitutional law, legal history, and political theory. He has published legal scholarship in Critical Analysis of Law and the NYU Journal of Legislation & Public Policy and opinion pieces in the NYU Law Review Forum, Just Security, the Washington Post, and Public Seminar. In 2021, he worked as a researcher on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Jonathan Marshfield | Associate Professor of Law at University of Florida Levin School of Law
Professor Marshfield teaches and writes in the areas of local government law, state constitutional law, and constitutional change. His research has appeared in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Boston University Law Review and the Michigan Law Review, among others. His state constitutional law research has been cited by the New Jersey Supreme Court, and his research into constitutional change has been cited by leading scholars in law reviews, textbooks, and academic journals. Professor Marshfield has also served as a consultant to foreign officials regarding issues of constitutional revision, and he has advised public policy groups regarding voter awareness and ballot issues.
Before joining the University of Florida, Professor Marshfield taught at the University of Nebraska College of Law, where he twice won Professor of the Year for this teaching. Professor Marshfield also taught at the University of Arkansas School of Law and practiced as a commercial litigator with Latham & Watkins LLP and Saul Ewing LLP. He clerked for Judge Robert B. Kugler, United States District Judge for the District of New Jersey, and Chief Justice James R. Zazzali of the Supreme Court of the State of New Jersey.
Professor Marshfield grew up in Durban, South Africa.
Sarah Harbison | General Counsel of the Pelican Institute for Public Policy
Sarah Harbison joined the Pelican Institute as General Counsel in January 2020. At the Pelican Institute, Sarah files strategic lawsuits challenging federal overreach and laws that burden economic and individual liberties. Notably, Sarah represented Brandon Trosclair, a Louisiana grocer who was the first to challenge the OSHA vaccine-or-test rule for private employers in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, resulting in a nationwide stay of the rule, which was later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
She also represents a lawyer challenging Louisiana’s mandatory bar membership requirement, a social worker challenging Louisiana’s facility need review laws, and an Arizona small business that can’t afford to make sales to Louisiana customers because the state’s disjointed sales tax collection system discriminates against out-of-state businesses.
Prior to joining the Pelican Institute, Sarah’s civil defense practice focused on products liability litigation. Because politics is her first love, Sarah left full-time law practice in December 2015 to join a Presidential primary campaign. From there, she subsequently advised candidates running for statewide office, including U.S. Senate, treasurer, secretary of state, and governor. A Lafayette native, Sarah is a summa cum laude graduate of Loyola University and Loyola Law School, where she served as a member of the Moot Court staff. She and her husband, Medlock, live in the Garden District in New Orleans with their cats, Beau and Jack. Sarah and Medlock enjoy hiking in our country’s national parks, exploring Civil War battlefields, camping in the Utah mountains, and renovating their 100-year-old home.
