William H. (Bill) Neukom is the managing general partner and CEO of San Francisco Baseball Associates L.P., which owns the San Francisco Giants baseball team who won the World Series in 2010. Mr. Neukom has been a member of the Giants ownership group since 1994 and a general partner since 2003. For the 25 years prior to that, Mr. Neukom served as the lead lawyer at Microsoft, the last 17 of which as the General Counsel and head of Microsoft’s legal, government affairs and philanthropic activities. Before and after his service at Microsoft, he was a partner in the international law firm of K&L Gates, working out of its Seattle office.

Mr. Neukom has been active for many years in bar association and community activities. He served as president of the American Bar Association in 2007-2008. In 2006, Mr. Neukom founded the World Justice Project, a multinational, multidisciplinary initiative to strengthen the rule of law worldwide. Through a multi-pronged approach, the Project seeks to create an international network of stakeholders who undertake programs to create communities of opportunity and equity around the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Author and journalist Joan Biskupic has covered the Supreme Court for twenty years and written several books on the judiciary, including American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Sandra Day O’Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice. Biskupic is currently working on a new book tracing the life of the first Hispanic justice, Sonia Sotomayor, against the backdrop of nomination politics and progress of Latinos in the law.

Biskupic has covered the Supreme Court for USA Today since June 2000. Before that, she was the Supreme Court reporter for The Washington Post (1992-2000) and legal affairs writer for Congressional Quarterly (1989-1992).  Biskupic is the author of several reference books, including Congressional Quarterly’s two-volume encyclopedia on the Supreme Court (1997, with co-author Elder Witt). A graduate of Georgetown University Law School, Biskupic is a regular panelist on PBS’s “Washington Week with Gwen Ifill” and NPR’s “Diane Rehm Show.” Read the rest of this entry »

Neil Barofsky is a former federal prosecutor and former Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP). He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in 1992 and from the New York University School of Law, magna cum laude, in 1995.

As SIGTARP, Mr. Barofsky audited and investigated the purchase, management, and sale of assets under the $700 billion TARP, the government bailout of banks and other companies during the recent financial crisis. When Mr. Barofsky left the Office of SIGTARP in spring of 2011, it had convicted 18 people, saved $555 million in taxpayer funds from being lost to fraud, and was working on 153 pending civil and criminal investigations, including 74 involving executives and senior officers at financial institutions who received or applied for TARP money. Read the rest of this entry »