Rebecca Green
Professor of the Practice of Law, Kelly Professor of Excellence in Teaching, Co-Director of the Elec
William & Mary Law School
Rebecca Green is Herbert Kelly Professor for Excellence in Teaching and Professor of the Practice of Law. Professor Green Co-Directs of the Election Law Program, a joint project of the Law School and the National Center for State Courts. In that role, Green oversees its annual symposia and speaker series and undertakes a series of projects designed to educate judges about election law topics, including producing a webinar series for judges in advance of the 2020 election and a set of Election War Games offered at state judicial conferences in Virginia, Colorado, and Wisconsin. With generous funding from the Democracy Fund, Green oversees the State Election Law eBenchbook project, a pilot project to annotate state election codes. In 2013, Green co-founded Revive My Vote with a student to assist Virginians with prior felony convictions regain the right to vote. Green has supervised students on a variety of projects for groups like the ABA Standing Committee on Election Law, the League of Women Voters, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, and Protect Democracy.
Professor Green serves as the faculty advisor to the student-run State of Elections blog. In the years leading up to and during the 2020 election, Professor Green served as a member of the National Task Force on Election Crises. Also prior to the 2020 election, Green helped students co-found the Alliance of Students at the Polls (ASAP), a national network of law students mobilized to recruit student poll workers for the 2020 election and beyond. Professor Green is regularly quoted in national media including the New York Times, The Guardian, Forbes, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, Politico, and others, and has provided commentary on voting and elections on C-SPAN, the BBC, and elsewhere.
Green's research interests focus on the intersection of privacy law and elections, most recently on the topic of election transparency, candidate privacy, and redistricting transparency. She has also explored the use of alternative dispute resolution in election processes.
Prior to law school, Professor Green earned a master's degree in Chinese legal history from Harvard University and assisted with U.S.-China trade negotiations at the U.S. Trade Representative in Washington, DC during the Clinton Administration.
The class of 2016 selected Professor Green to receive the Walter Williams Jr. Memorial Teaching Award awarded annually to one professor by the graduating class.
Peter Miller
Researcher, Democracy
Brennan Center of Justice at NYU Law
Peter Miller is a researcher at the Brennan Center focusing on redistricting, voting, and elections. His research interests include U.S. and comparative politics, voting behavior, political institutions, and public opinion. His work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including the Annual Review of Political Science, Electoral Studies, Election Law Journal, American Politics Research, and the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties. One of Miller’s articles on redistricting commissions was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. He is a frequent commentator on topics related to redistricting reform, voting rights, and elections.
Miller was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Tampere, in Finland, during the 2016–17 academic year. He was previously a Podlich Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine and a Templeton Foundation Fellow in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a doctorate and a master’s degree in political science from the University of California, Irvine, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Reed College.
Dr. Paul Gronke
Professor, Political Science
Reed College
Paul Gronke (PhD Michigan, '93, MA University of Essex ’84, BA Chicago '82) is a professor of Political Science and Director of the Early Voting Information at Reed College in Portland, OR. Dr. Gronke studies American politics, specializing in convenience and early voting, election administration, public opinion, and elections.
In 2005, Dr. Gronke established the Early Voting Information Center (http://earlyvoting.net). EVIC searches for common sense, non-partisan solutions to identified problems in election administration that are backed by solid empirical evidence and tailored to the conditions of the time and jurisdiction, and that may or may not include the administration of early voting. EVIC has worked with a number of state and local governments, Secretaries of State and state election directors, federal agencies, and non-profit organization, mostly but not exclusively related to early voting and social scientific research on election administration.
For the past decade, Dr. Gronke has worked to improve access and ensure integrity in the American elections system, helping to guarantee that every eligible citizen in the United States can participate in our democratic system.
Gronke’s has published more than three dozen peer-reviewed articles, monographs, and reports on topics ranging from public opinion and trust in government, public opinion about government use of torture, congressional elections, early and no-excuse absentee voting, and automatic voter registration.
Dr. Gronke served for eight years as editor of the Election Law Journal, an interdisciplinary journal of election law, administration, and politics, and is currently co-editor of PS: Political Science and Politics, one of three flagship journals of the American Political Science Association.
Nicole Austin-Hillery
Executive Director, U.S. Program
Human Rights Watch
Nicole Austin-Hillery is the Executive Director of the US Program at Human Rights Watch. In this role, Ms. Austin-Hillery leads Human Rights Watch’s efforts to end violations in abusive systems within the United States. Her work focuses on addressing and combatting systemic racism, improving the U.S. immigration system, tackling rights problems within the domestic criminal justice system and advocating for policies to address poverty and inequality informed by international human rights standards.
Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Ms. Austin-Hillery was the first Director and Counsel of The Brennan Center’s Washington, D.C. office which she opened in March 2008. At the Brennan Center, she oversaw the growth and development of the Center’s advocacy and policy development work in Washington and served as its chief representative before Congress and the Executive Branch.
Ms. Austin-Hillery has testified before state and local legislative bodies as well as Congress. She has published numerous pieces for major news outlets including the Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Hill, CNN.com and others. She is a frequent speaker on a host of progressive issues.
Prior to her time at the Brennan Center, Ms. Austin-Hillery litigated at the law firm of Mehri & Skalet, PLLC as part of the firm's civil rights employment class action practice and as the George N. Lindsay Civil Rights Law Fellow at the national office of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C. where she focused on housing litigation and policy.
She served as the 2018-2019 President of the Washington Bar Association, is a past President and current Board member of the Washington Council of Lawyers, formerly served as an Advisory Committee Member of the ABA Standing Committee on Election Law, serves on the Board of Common Cause and is a former co-chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s Defense Function Committee. She has also been an adjunct civil rights professor at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law and is a former Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School. Ms. Austin-Hillery is a graduate of the Howard University School of Law and Carnegie Mellon University.
Charles H. Bell, Jr.
Senior Partner
Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, LLP.
Chuck Bell is the founding partner of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, LLP. He has practiced political and election law exclusively since 1980. He is a nationally-recognized expert on federal and state campaign finance and election laws.
He served as general counsel to the California Republican Party from 1981 to 1993 and from 1998 to 2017. He has provided legal advice and representation to three former California Governors, two Presidential candidates, numerous California state constitutional officers, Congressional, State Senate and Assembly leaders and candidates. He has also represented the Republican National Committee, the Republican National Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee in litigation and political law matters.
He is a past president of the Republican National Lawyers Association, Washington, DC, and currently serves as its general counsel. Chuck was the founding Chairman of the California Political Attorneys Association. He is a member of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law.
He has litigated cases on constitutional issues concerning campaign finance and election law in the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court and federal and state trial and appellate courts. He served as a national lawyers co-chairman for the Romney and McCain Presidential campaigns and state lawyers chairman for the Dole and two Bushes Presidential campaigns. He is an officer and director of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Capitol Foundation and the Sacramento Federal Judicial Library and Learning Center Foundation which supports the Justice Anthony M. Kennedy Library and Learning Center in Sacramento, California. He served as an advisor to political parties in the historic 1994 South African election.
He is a graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Law School.
John Hardin Young
Attorney
Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock, P.C.
John (Jack) Hardin Young has held senior positions in private law firms, industry and government. His primary areas of practice are administrative and regulatory law, electoral dispute resolution, and electoral processes and recounts. He has represented clients in federal and state litigation across the United States.
Senior Global Electoral Dispute Advisor, International Foundation for Electoral Systems (2009- ). Managing Director, Center for the Mediation of Electoral Disputes (CMED).
Chair, ABA Standing Committee on Election Law; ABA Board of Governors(2007-2010); Past Chair, ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice; Life Fellow, American Bar Foundation; Board of Trustees, American Inns of Court Foundation(2004-2008) Founding Board member Temple Bar Scholars program; Life Member, American Law Institute; Editor, International Election Principles (ABA 2008); author, Young’s Federal Rules of Evidence.
Adjutant Professor, William & Mary Law School, International & Comparative Election Law ( 2009- ); University of Pittsburg Law School, Election Law; and, George Mason Law School, Alternative Dispute Resolution (2004); Special Counsel to the Democratic National Committee & Co-Chair, National Lawyers Council (1996-2000); Chair, American Inns of Court/Commercial Bar of England Rule of Law Conference (2007).
Benjamin Griffith
Principal
Griffith Law Firm
Ben Griffith's federal and state civil litigation practice traces back to his early civil trial work in the Mississippi Delta with his late father and law partner, Ellis Griffith. That work began to reach into other states during the late 1970's. Ben’s civil litigation practice is now based in Oxford, Mississippi and extends to representing state agencies, counties, cities, school boards, elected officials, nongovernmental entities and other private sector insureds and their insurers in federal and state civil litigation throughout Mississippi and in other jurisdictions.
He has been associated to represent defendants in federal and state civil litigation in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C. With Oxford, Mississippi as a base for an expanded multi-state practice, Ben’s work focuses on defense of state and local governments, agencies, and school districts in civil rights, voting rights, election law, governmental tort liability, and First Amendment litigation, representation of commercial entities and other private sector insureds in premises security litigation, public entity insurance coverage disputes, and environmental law with a focus on water resources management.
He served as Board Attorney for the Bolivar County Board of Supervisors for 21 years from 1983 through 2003, and continues to serve as Board Attorney for the 17-county Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Joint Water Management District, a position held since 1989. He has been recognized by his peers through inclusion in Best Lawyers in America in the field of Municipal Law and Mid South SuperLawyers in the field of Municipal Law each year since 2006. He serves as Adjunct Professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law and teaches the Municipal Law Practice Skills Course.
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