Litigating the election

Dan Ortiz is the Michael J. and Jane R. Horvitz Distinguished Professor of Law and the director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law. He teaches constitutional law, administrative law, electoral law, civil procedure and legal theory. In 1992 he received the Z Society Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Virginia. He served as the Harrison Foundation Research Professor in 1992-95, the Elizabeth D. and Richard A. Merrill Research Professor in 1996-99, and the Joseph C. Carter, Jr., Research Professor in 2000-03. Ortiz has clerked for Judge Stephen G. Breyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Myrna Pérez is director of the Brennan Center for Justice's Voting Rights and Elections Program, and she leads the Program's research, advocacy, and litigation work nationwide. An expert on voting rights and election administration, she is the author of several nationally recognized reports and articles. Her work has been featured in media outlets across the country, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and MSNBC. She has testified before Congress and several state legislatures on a variety of voting rights related issues. She is a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School and has also served as an adjunct professor of clinical law at NYU School of Law. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Pérez was the Civil Rights Fellow at Relman, Dane & Colfax, a civil rights law firm in Washington, DC.

Bertrall Ross is the Chancellor's Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Laws. He explore the normative structures of democratic responsiveness and integrates political theory and empirical social science into discussions of legal doctrine, the institutional role of courts, and democratic design. In the area of legislation, he seeks to address how courts should reconcile legislative supremacy with the vexing problem of interpreting statutes in contexts not foreseen by the enacting legislature. In election law, he is examining the constitutional dimensions and the structural sources of the marginalization of the poor in the American political process.

Micah Schwartzman is the director of the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, the Hardy Cross Dillard Professor of Law, and a Martha Lubin Karsh and Bruce A. Karsh Bicentennial Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He focuses on law and religion, jurisprudence, political philosophy and constitutional law. A graduate of UVA and the UVA School of Law, Schwartzman clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and was a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities.