03/24/2005
CONTACT: Michael E. Diegel, (202) 554-9000
Washington, D.C., March 24, 2005 – The Legal Foundation of the National Federation of Independent Business today announced the addition of four distinguished specialists in legal and regulatory issues to its Advisory Board.
The four new board members are Susan Dudley, director of the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Cameron Findlay, executive vice president and general counsel of Aon Corporation, Sherman (Tiger) Joyce, president of the American Tort Reform Association and James Wickett, counsel, Hogan & Hartson.
The new board members will join the nine current board members and help guide the foundation in choosing cases to pursue as well as recommend topics for legal advisory material for small-business owners. The foundation won its first victory in the U.S. Supreme Court this month with a decision in the case of Ballard v. Commissioner Internal Revenue Service. The Legal Foundation filed an amicus brief last August arguing that the U.S. Tax Court’s refusal to disclose special trial judge reports to litigants violated taxpayers’ rights and was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court struck down the Tax Court’s practice in a 7-2 decision.
“America’s small businesses will be well served by the new board members and their wide range of experience in legal and regulatory matters,” said Karen Harned, executive director of the Legal Foundation. “When federal regulatory agencies overstep their bounds, entrepreneurs sometimes have nowhere to turn but to the courts. The addition of these members, with their expertise and judgment, will be invaluable to the Legal Foundation as we continue our fight for small-business owners in the courts.”
The Legal Foundation was founded in 2000 to protect the interests of small-business owners in the nation’s courts. In 1996, Congress gave small-business owners an important legal tool – the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA). SBREFA opened the door for judicial review of agency decisions that affect small businesses. Through the NFIB Legal Foundation, small business can challenge agency decisions that do not adequately consider their impact on small business – the basic requirement of SBREFA.
Dudley, who is also an adjunct professor at George Mason University, was formerly vice president and director of environmental analysis at Economist Inc., a consulting firm in Washington, D.C., where she specialized in applying financial and economic concepts to environmental and energy issues. She has worked at both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Management and Budget where she supervised the staff responsible for reviewing energy and environmental regulations. Dudley holds an M.S. from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.S. summa cum laude in resource economics from the University of Massachusetts. She has written on a variety of topics related to regulatory policy and applied finance and has served as an expert in environmental litigation, arbitrations and agency negotiations.
As the company’s chief legal officer and a member of Aon’s senior management team, Findlay leads Aon's Global Law Department and manages myriad legal, regulatory and government relations matters for Aon and its business units throughout the world. Before joining Aon, Findlay served from 2001 to 2003 as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor in the administration of President George W. Bush. He also was the president’s appointee to the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Findlay’s previous professional experience includes serving as a partner at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, one of the world’s largest law firms. From 1989 to 1992, he served in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, both at the White House as deputy assistant to the president and counselor to the chief of staff, and at the Department of Transportation as counselor to the Secretary of Transportation. Before that, he served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia at the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Stephen Williams at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Findlay received his B.A. with highest distinction from Northwestern University, his M.A. with First Class Honours from Oxford University and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.
Joyce is a graduate of Princeton University and Catholic University Law School. He served as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator John C. Danforth and after being admitted to the Virginia Bar, he became minority counsel to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, where he worked on product liability legislation. Joyce assumed his current position in August 1994.
Wickett advises and represents corporations, nonprofits, coalitions and trade associations on legislative and regulatory matters. His areas of concentration include tax and a broad variety of other matters including energy, environmental, judiciary, technology and telecommunications issues. Prior to joining Hogan & Hartson, he practiced in the tax section of a major New York-based law firm. From 1994 to 1998, Wickett was manager of legislative affairs for NFIB, where he served as the tax and environmental issues lobbyist and was chairman of the Family Business Estate Tax Coalition. He also served as advisor to NFIB president and CEO Jack Faris in his role as a commissioner on the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform (the “Kemp Commission”).
The NFIB Legal Foundation is a 501(c)(3) public interest law firm created to protect the rights of America's small-business owners by providing advisory material on legal issues and by ensuring that the voice of small business is heard in the nation’s courts. The National Federation of Independent Business represents the consensus views of its 600,000 members in Washington, D.C., and all 50-state capitals.
