Pro Position

David L. Hudson, Jr., Associate Professor of Law, Belmon University School of Law

Professor Hudson teaches Torts, Constitutional Law, First Amendment Law, and Bar Exam Workshop at Belmont. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of more than 40 books. For much of his career, he has worked on First Amendment issues. He serves as a Justice Robert H. Jackson Legal Fellow for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and a First Amendment Fellow for the Freedom Forum Institute. For 17 years, he was an attorney and scholar at the First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Hudson has taught classes at Vanderbilt Law School and the Nashville School of Law. In June 2018, the Nashville School of Law awarded him its Distinguished Faculty Award. He earned his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his law degree from Vanderbilt Law School. Professor Hudson's published works have been cited and relied upon by other scholars and courts. Hudson also is a licensed boxing judge and has judged a dozen world title bouts.

Con Position

Ilya Shapiro, Manhattan Institute

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.

Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report. 

Moderator

Judge Peter Phipps, Third Circuit Court of Appeals

Judge Phipps earned both a Bachelor of Science in physics and a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Dayton, summa cum laude, and earned his Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School, where he served as the managing editor of the Stanford Law & Policy Review. He also served as a law clerk to Judge R. Guy Cole Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Earlier in his career, Phipps spent three years as an associate at Jones Day, where his practice focused on civil litigation. Before becoming a judge, Phipps served as senior trial counsel in the Federal Programs Branch of the United States Department of Justice Civil Division. During his 14-year tenure at the Justice Department, Phipps litigated some of the most significant cases implicating the interests of the United States and received numerous awards and commendations, including the Attorney General's Distinguished Service Award