Robertson Hall
100 Arthur Lewis Auditorium

Sponsored by the Alumni Association of Princeton University

Moderator

Robert P. George
Director, James Madison Program; McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence; Professor of Politics

Panelists

Peggy (Margaret) Mary Russell ’79
Law Professor, Santa Clara University

Bruce Reinhart ’84
United States Magistrate Judge, Southern District of Florida

Elizabeth Earle Beske ’89
Associate Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law

 Ben Horwich ’99
Partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson

Moderator

Robert P. George
Director, James Madison Program; McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of Politics, Princeton University

Robert George is founder and director of Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He has served as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics. He has been the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. As a judicial fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court, he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A graduate of Swarthmore, he holds a J.D. and MTS from Harvard University and a DPhil, BCL, DCL and DLitt from Oxford University. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Panelists

Peggy (Margaret) Mary Russell ’79
Law Professor, Santa Clara University

Peggy Russell is originally from Philadelphia but has spent most of her adult life in Northern California. She has a JD and JSM from Stanford Law School, was a judicial clerk in Madison, Wisconsin, and since 1990, has been on the faculty at Santa Clara University. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Tanzania in 2014 and has also been a visiting professor at law schools in Boston and New York. Her current research interests lie in constitutional law and restorative justice. Her publications include “Freedom of Assembly and Petition: The First Amendment, Its Constitutional History and the Contemporary Debate” (editor) and numerous articles and op-eds. She is a member of the American Law Institute and has been active in the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Constitution Society and the Princeton AlumniCorps board. The Silicon Valley Business Journal named her as one of its “Women of Influence 2022.”

Bruce Reinhart ’84
United States Magistrate Judge, Southern District of Florida

Bruce Reinhart has been a United States magistrate judge in West Palm Beach, Florida, since March 2018. Prior to taking the bench, he spent 30 years as a federal prosecutor and white-collar criminal defense lawyer. Reinhart earned a degree in civil engineering, cum laude, from Princeton and a J.D., cum laude, in 1987 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He began his legal career through the Attorney General’s Honors Program after serving as a law clerk on the federal trial court in Philadelphia. He is married to Carolyn Bell, a judge for the 15th judicial circuit court of Florida, and is the proud father of two adult sons. He is the former president of the Princeton Alumni Association of Palm Beach and Martin Counties.

Elizabeth Earle Beske ’89
Associate Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law

Elizabeth Earle Beske received her J.D. from Columbia University Law School in 1993. At Columbia, she served as editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review and was designated a Kent Scholar and Stone Scholar. Upon graduation, she received the John Ordronaux Prize for highest academic achievement in her graduating class. Beske clerked for Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the United States Supreme Court. She spent four years as an appellate litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in San Francisco, before moving to Bethesda, Maryland. At American University Washington College of Law, Beske teaches civil procedure, federal courts and constitutional law. In 2018, she received the Washington College of Law Excellence in Teaching Award. Her scholarship focuses on Article III, adjudicative retroactivity, horizontal federalism and the separation of powers.

Ben Horwich ’99
Partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson

Ben Horwich focuses on appellate litigation, complex litigation and economic regulation at the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson, where he is a partner. He has particular expertise in antitrust, transportation, taxation and the relationship between federal and state law, including the constitutional limitations on state authority. Horwich is based in San Francisco, but he has briefed and argued appeals across the country, including arguing 10 cases in the United States Supreme Court. He served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant to the solicitor general from 2009 to 2014, in the office responsible for conducting litigation on behalf of the United States in the Supreme Court. Early in his legal career, Horwich was the president of the Stanford Law Review and served as a law clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and to Justice Samuel Alito.