Yvette Butler
Assistant Professor of Law
The University of Mississippi School of Law
Yvette Butler joined the University of Mississippi School of Law faculty in July 2020. Professor Butler’s areas of focus are racial justice, economic justice, criminal system reform, civil rights, and civil liberties. Her guiding passion has been about helping people whose sexuality is used against them, whether through harmful approaches to addressing sex work or issues like human trafficking, nonconsensual pornography, and sexting between minors.
Professor Butler has engaged in state and federal civil litigation related to police misconduct, family law, criminal record expungement, and more. She previously worked as an attorney with the Law Office of Victor Glasberg & Associates, an Alexandria, Virginia based federal civil rights litigation firm. Professor Butler also clerked for a Federal Magistrate Judge in her home state of South Dakota. In 2016, Professor Butler returned to the Washington, DC area to represent and advocate for policy change alongside sex workers and survivors of trafficking at the Amara Legal Center as an Attorney and Director of Policy. In 2019, Professor Butler served as Director of Capacity Building and Systems Change with the Center for Survivor Agency and Justice, a national non-profit working at the intersection of domestic/sexual violence and economic security. While there, Professor Butler developed and led trainings for attorneys and non-lawyer advocates and collaborated with other national and local groups through federal comments, amicus briefs, and more.
Michelle Hanlon
Air & Space Law Instructor, Research Counsel
The University of Mississippi School of Law
Michelle is a Co-Director of the Center for Air and Space Law and an instructor of aviation and space law. Michelle received her B.A. in Political Science from Yale College and her J.D. magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center. She earned her LL.M in Air and Space Law from McGill University where the focus of her research was commercial space and the intersection of commerce and public law.
Prior to focusing on aviation — including uncrewed aircraft — and space law, Michelle was engaged in a private business law practice. Her legal career commenced with the restructuring of sovereign debt for a number of South and Latin American countries and evolved into the negotiation and implementation of cross-border technology mergers and acquisitions. Her subsequent solo practice advised entrepreneurs across four continents on all aspects of bringing their innovative ideas to market: from basic corporate formation to financings and buyouts.
Michelle is a Co-Founder and the President of For All Moonkind, Inc., a nonprofit corporation that is the only organization in the world focused on protecting human cultural heritage in outer space. For All Moonkind has been recognized by the United Nations as a Permanent Observer to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Michelle is the President of the National Space Society and is on the Advisory Board of several start-ups involved in commercial space activities including orbital debris removal, remote sensing and the support of lunar resource extraction. Michelle is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Space Law and the Faculty Advisor for the Journal of Drone Law and Policy.
Jose H. Ocasio-Christian
Partner & CEO
Caelus Partners, LLC
Jose is the architect and foremost advocate of the Community in Space™ project. He sets the strategic direction of Caelus Partners, builds relationships globally, and serves our clients on multiple strategic dimensions. Jose is our agent of change in the most difficult challenges that the world has for the space domain and is driven by something greater than himself. Previous to this, Jose was an Infantry Officer in the US Army. His experience leading multiple complex and diverse organizations to achieve success in volatile, uncertain, challenging, and ambiguous situations around the world in the classified and open source environments within the US military is now being applied to the challenge of commercializing space globally. He has provided vision and direction to strategic and operational teams to work across different cultures and to understand fragmented stakeholder motivations to arrive at optimal solutions, something critically needed in developing the economic engine for the space domain. He has managed strategies worth hundreds of billions of dollars that impacted millions of individuals in the United States, its military, and overseas. He has led change efforts to fundamentally transform critical aspects of communities to help them thrive and prosper.
Jose holds a Master of Science in Joint Campaign Planning and Strategy from the National Defense University (Joint Advanced Warfighting School). He also has a Bachelor of Science in Education and Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from the University of Massachusetts.
Cedric D. Campbell
Associate Counsel to the Inspector General
NASA
Cedric works as Associate Counsel to the Inspector General for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He began working for the agency in 2002 and was assigned to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Prior to working for NASA, Cedric worked as an attorney for the US Postal Service-Office of Inspector General as well as the US Postal Service, Office of General Counsel. Prior to working for the Postal Service, Cedric practiced law in the private sector specializing in civil rights law, labor and employment law.
During the course of his career as a government attorney, Cedric has advised on many important legal issues. He has developed an expertise in the area of whistleblower law, labor and employment law, white collar crime with an emphasis on procurement fraud and criminal conflicts of interest, Space law, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, litigation before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Freedom of Information Act/Privacy Act, and several areas of administrative law. Highlights include his work with the Columbia Accident Investigation Board after the catastrophic loss of our astronauts, his role in advising Special Agents during the investigation and criminal trial of former NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak, and his work on issues relating to use of Government vehicles by Special Agents. Cedric has been recognized as Attorney of the Year while working for both NASA and the US Postal Service-OIG, and his work has twice been recognized by the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency.
Prior to his legal career, Cedric served his country on active duty for 10 years as an officer in the United States Army. Among other things, Cedric served as an Interrogator and Arabic Linguist in the Military Intelligence Corps and Company Commander in the Military Police Corps. He was deployed several times to include Operation Just Cause (Panama), Operation Desert Storm (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq), and Operation Restore Hope (Somalia). Cedric proudly served in the 18th Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, the 101st Airborne Division, and 4th Infantry Division while earning the Airborne (Parachutist) and Air Assault badges.
Cedric played football during his days in college and graduated with an undergraduate degree from the Jacksonville State University. He majored in Political Science with a minor in English. While an undergraduate, Cedric pledged and is still a proud member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. After leaving the military, Cedric went on to attend and graduate from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University. Cedric is licensed to practice in the state of Texas and is also a member of the Supreme Court Bar.
Cedric currently resides in Houston, Texas and is the proud father of three children, Cedric, Kaila, and Desmond.
AJ Link
Co-President
NDLSA
AJ Link is the Co-President of the NDLSA dealing with external affairs. He oversees Outreach and Advocacy, Educational Resources, and Professional Development.
AJ Link received his JD from The George Washington University Law School in 2020. He is currently pursuing an LLM in Space Law at the University of Mississippi.
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