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Prior Speakers

Bruce Feustal Bruce Feustel

Bruce Feustel has worked in or for state legislatures for over 36 years. He currently is a Senior Fellow in the Legislative Management Program of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), where he provides training and educational programs for legislators and legislative staff employees and participates in management studies of legislatures and legislative staff organizations. He has also taught and organized seminars on bill drafting and the legislative process in over 17 countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Susan Hutson Susan Hutson

Susan Hutson is the Independent Police Monitor of the City of New Orleans. She previously worked as an assistant inspector general with the Los Angeles Police Commission’s Office of the Inspector General and as the Police Monitor for Austin, Texas. Ms. Hutson holds an undergraduate degree from the University Pennsylvania and a J.D. from Tulane University School of Law.

  Philip Knight

Philip Knight is a consulting legislative counsel based in Vancouver, Canada. He has been consulted on the language of the law by government departments and agencies throughout the English-speaking world, including Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Kenya. In 1995 and 1996, he was a legal drafting advisor to the Constitutional Assembly of South Africa, and was part of the drafting team responsible for final writing of the new democratic constitution. From 2001 to 2003, Mr. Knight led the drafting team of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission in preparation of proposed drafts of a new constitution for Kenya.

Shu-yi Oei Shu-yi Oei

Shu-Yi Oei joined the faculty at Tulane Law School in 2009 and teaches classes on tax policy and taxation. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 2003, she practiced tax law at the Boston law firm of Bingham McCutchen advising clients in a wide variety of federal state, and international tax matters. Professor Oei holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School.

Garth Thorton Garth Thornton

Garth Thornton is the author of Legislative Drafting, the leading text on legislative drafting among Commonwealth countries. He began his career as a legislative drafter in Tanganyika (now know as Tanzania) and then went on to work with the East Africa High Commission in Nairobi. He returned to Dar es Salaam to become Chief Parliamentary Draftsman and Counsel to the Speaker during the period in which the government enacted laws to take over and nationalize the Tanzanian branches of major banks and other major commercial companies owned by overseas companies. He continued his involvement in legislative drafting in Hong Kong, Australia, and his native country, New Zealand.

Richard Wydick Professor Richard Wydick

Richard Wydick taught for over 32 years at the University of California, Davis, School of Law and is the author of Plain English for Lawyers, a favorite text used by legal writing teachers, lawyers and judges. In 2005, the Legal Writing Institute, a non-profit organization that provides a forum for discussion and scholarship about legal writing, analysis, and research, presented Professor Wydick with its Gold Pen Award for having written Plain English for Lawyers, stating: Plain English for Lawyers. . . has become a classic. Perhaps no single work has done more to improve the writing of lawyers and law students and to promote the modern trend toward a clear, plain style of legal writing.