| Jason C. DeSanto is fascinated by the power of communication and the freedom to engage in it. He teaches courses at the intersection of law and public advocacy, including First Amendment law, and has pioneered the Law School's curriculum geared to preparing lawyers as impactful public persuaders, particularly in the worlds of policymaking and entrepreneurship. He is one of the highest-rated lecturers across the University, has won the Dean's Teaching Award, and was voted by three consecutive Law School graduating classes to deliver the School's annual Last Lecture, an institutional flagship. He also teaches the Northwestern School of Communication's executive courses in persuasion and leadership, and formerly served as a partner at Chicago's Freeborn & Peters LLP, where he handled constitutional and corporate litigation, represented a series of individuals and public entities in cases of public controversy, and acted as a Special Assistant Attorney General of Illinois.
He also served for more than 15 years as a political speechwriter and debate strategist, having assisted U.S. Senators, members of Congress, and multiple American presidential campaigns. He provides public speaking coaching, media training, and communications strategy to C-suite executives at a series of Fortune 500 companies and not-for-profit entities, and has advised prevailing counsel in U.S. Supreme Court litigation. He has critiqued persuasion and political communication for The New York Times, the Today Show, CBS Radio, and the BBC; served as lead commentator on presidential addresses and debates for the award-winning PBS program, Chicago Tonight; and is a periodic analyst of presidential debates at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. He also is founding co-producer of the Newt & Jo Minow Debate Series, Oxford-style public policy debates originated at Northwestern Pritzker Law as a tribute to, and with the participation of, U.S. presidential debate pioneer and Law School alum Newton N. Minow.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, he was an Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, an H. Clayton Louderback Legal Writing Instructor, and the winner of the George Schechtman Prize. He holds an undergraduate degree from Northwestern, concentrating in American rhetorical history and graduating magna cum laude. He is a Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, has provided First Amendment training assistance for lawyers and journalists from former republics of the Soviet Union, and is an editorial board member of the journal First Amendment Studies. He also graduated from the Second City Conservatory and periodically appears as a political satirist and commentator on Chicago radio.
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| Daniel B. Rodriguez, the Harold Washington Professor at the Law School, served as dean of the Law School from January 2012 through August 2018.
His principal academic work is in the areas of administrative law, local government law, statutory interpretation, federal and state constitutional law, and the law-business-technology interface.
Formerly, Professor Rodriguez served as Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law at the University of Texas-Austin; as a Research Fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy; as Dean and Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law; and, as a Professor of Law at University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He has also served as a visiting professor at several top law schools, including Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, University of Southern California, and Virginia.
Professor Rodriguez was the 2014 President of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and is currently serving as chair of the council of the American Bar Association Center for Innovation, a council member of the American Law Institute, and as an advisor to ROSS Intelligence, Inc.
Rodriguez received his law degree, with honors, from Harvard Law School and his undergraduate degree from California State University of Long Beach.
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| Carter G. Phillips (MA '75, JD '77) was the managing partner of Sidley’s Washington office and a member of the firm’s Management and Executive Committees from 1994 until 2013. He then became the Chair of the firm’s Executive Committee and served in that role until 2018 when he became the Chair Emeritus. Since then he has returned to the full-time practice of law as one of the most experienced Supreme Court and appellate lawyers in the country. He served as a law clerk to both Judge Robert Sprecher on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Chief Justice Warren E. Burger on the United States Supreme Court. He also served as Assistant to the Solicitor General from 1981-1984. Mr. Phillips has argued 88 cases before the Supreme Court which include 79 cases since joining Sidley and 9 cases on behalf of the federal government while working in the Solicitor General’s office. He also has argued more than 140 cases in U.S. courts of appeals, including at least one in every circuit. Mr. Phillips is a member of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, and a member of the Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is the current Chair of the Federal Circuit Advisory Council. He serves as Treasurer and on the Board of Trustees of the Supreme Court Historical Society. He has been a co-director of Northwestern University School of Law’s Supreme Court clinic and an adjunct professor at the Law School for 15 years. Mr. Phillips graduated summa cum laude from The Ohio State University and received his J.D. magna cum laude, Order of the Coif from Northwestern University School of Law.
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| Kate Shaw (JD '06) is a Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Her research focuses on executive power, federal courts, election law, and gender and sexual orientation and the law. Her academic work has appeared or is forthcoming, among other places, in the Columbia Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Texas Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Northwestern University Law Review, and she recently published the book Reproductive Rights and Justice Stories, with Professors Melissa Murray and Reva Siegel. Her popular writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Slate, and the Take Care Blog, and she is a contributor with ABC News and co-hosts the Supreme Court podcast Strict Scrutiny. Before joining Cardozo, she served as an Associate Counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office, and clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens and Judge Richard Posner. Professor Shaw is a graduate of Brown University and the Northwestern University School of Law. |