Board: Board Alumni

Adam Winkler

Adam Winkler is a professor at UCLA School of Law, where he also serves as the school’s ACS faculty advisor and as a member of ACS’s Board of Academic Advisors. Winkler sits on the ACS Board of Advisors.

Winkler has published widely on American constitutional law and history, and his scholarship has been cited in landmark Supreme Court cases, including opinions on the Second Amendment and on corporate free speech rights. Winkler is the author of “We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights” and “Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America.” He was the co-editor of the “Encyclopedia of the American Constitution” (2d edition). Winkler’s writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Review of Books, Atlantic, New Republic, Slate, and Scotusblog.

Winkler received his J.D. from New York University School of Law, which honored him with the Legal Teaching Award for outstanding alumni in legal academia. He is a graduate of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and holds a M.A. in political science from UCLA. He clerked for the late Hon. David Thompson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.                                                                                    

Hon. Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.

Donald B. Verrilli Jr. served as Solicitor General of the United States from 2011 to 2016.  His landmark victories included his successful advocacy in defense of the Affordable Care Act, for marriage equality, and in favor of federal preemption authority in the immigration field. In 2017, Verrilli was appointed to the ACS board of directors.

Before serving as Solicitor General, Verrilli served as Deputy White House Counsel, and previously, as an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice.  In those positions, he counseled the president and senior government officials on a wide range of legal issues involving national security, economic regulation, domestic policy, and the scope of executive and administrative authority.

Verrilli joined Munger, Tolles & Olson in October 2016, and is the founder of its Washington, D.C. office. His practice focuses on Supreme Court and appellate litigation and on representing and counseling clients on multi-dimensional problems, where litigation, regulation and public policy intersect to shape markets and industries in our evolving economy.

He earned his J.D. with honors in 1983 from Columbia Law School, and was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review, and earned his B.A. in 1979 from Yale University.   He clerked for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. for the U.S. Supreme Court from 1984-1985 and Judge J. Skelly Wright for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1983-1984.

Christine A. Varney

Christine A. Varney is a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where she chairs the firm’s antitrust practice. She is also a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School and speaks publicly on the topics of antitrust, international competition, mergers and government investigations. Varney served on the ACS board of directors from 2012-2018.

Varney is the only person to have served as both the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust and as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. She also served as Assistant to the President and Secretary to the Cabinet in the Clinton Administration. Earlier in her career, Varney was an attorney at Hogan and Hartson.

The National Law Journal has selected Varney as one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America,” and one of 50 Governance, Risk & Compliance Trailblazers & Pioneers. She was named a “Competition MVP” by Law360 and “Lawyer of the Year” by Global Competition Review. She is a member of the International Bar Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, and The Economic Club of New York.

Varney received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Albany, an M.P.A. from Syracuse University, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.