HAMPTONS INSTITUTE: MIDTERMS 2026: IS DEMOCRACY ITSELF ON THE BALLOT?

Jeh Johnson was Secretary of Homeland Security (2013-2017) and General Counsel of the Department of Defense (2009-2012) in the Obama Administration, and General Counsel of the Department of the Air Force (1998-2001) in the Clinton Administration.  Earlier in his career, he was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York (1989-1991).

For most of his career Johnson had been a lawyer and trial lawyer in private practice at the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.  Johnson is also a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers.  In 1993, Johnson became the first African American elected to partnership at Paul Weiss.  He retired from the firm in June 2025.  

Johnson is currently on the board of directors of MetLife and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.  He previously served on the board of directors of Lockheed Martin, U.S. Steel, PG&E, and the Council on Foreign Relations.   Johnson is a regular commentator on NBC’s Meet The Press, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, FOX’s Fox & Friends, CNN, NewsNation and other news networks.  In September 2024 Johnson played the role of the incumbent President running for reelection in the PBS special “Deadlock.”

Johnson is a graduate of Morehouse College and Columbia Law School and the recipient of 13 honorary degrees. He has debated numerous times at the Oxford and Cambridge Unions in England, and an honorary life member of the Cambridge Union.  

Johnson is the 2024 recipient of the Gold Medal, the New York State Bar Association’s highest honor, a 2024 recipient of the National Law Journal’s Lifetime Achievement Award, a 2022 recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, a 2021 recipient of the American Lawyer’s Lifetime Achievement Award, as “an American statesman [who] has devoted his career to the public interest,” and a 2018 recipient of the Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Award, presented at the Reagan Presidential Library, for “contribut[ing] greatly to the defense of our nation,” and “guiding us through turbulent times with courage and wisdom.”

Photo courtesy of The US Department of Homeland Security.

Judge Michael Luttig served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for 15 years, from 1991 to 2006.

Judge Luttig was Counselor and Special Advisor to The Coca-Cola Company and the Board of Directors of the Coca-Cola Company from January 2021 to January 2025. 

Prior to joining The Coca-Cola Company, Judge Luttig was Counselor and Senior Advisor to The Boeing Company CEO and The Boeing Company Board of Directors from January 2019 to January 2020 and Executive Vice President and General Counsel of The Boeing Company from 2006 to 2020.

Before he was appointed to the Federal Bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, he served as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel and Counselor to the Attorney General of the United States at the U.S. Department of Justice 1990-1991. He was Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice from 1989-1990. 

He was Assistant Counsel to the President at The White House from 1981 to 1982 under President Ronald Reagan. From 1982 to 1983, he was a law clerk to then-Judge Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  From 1983 to 1985, he served as a law clerk and then Special Assistant to the Chief Justice of the United States, Warren E. Burger.

Judge Luttig is currently a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Franklin-Templeton Mutual Funds, a Member of the Board of Trustees of The Aspen Institute, a Member of the Board of the Society for the Rule of Law, Senior Fellow of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, Co-Chair of the Task Force for American Democracy, a Member of the Board of the Carter/Ford National Alliance for An Enduring Democracy, and a Member of the National Advisory Council of More Perfect, and a Member of the George Washington Presidential Library Advisory Council.

Judge Luttig was formerly Co-Chair of the American Bar Association Task Force for American Democracy, a Member of the Board of Trustees of the National Constitution Center, a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Thomas Jefferson/Monticello Foundation, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Karsh Institute of Democracy and the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy.

Judge Luttig earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington and Lee University and his law degree from the University of Virginia.

Judge Luttig is married to Mrs. Elizabeth Luttig.  The couple have two children, Morgan and John.

Michael Waldman is president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. A nonpartisan law and policy institute that focuses on improving systems of democracy and justice, the Brennan Center is a leading national voice on voting rights, money in politics, criminal justice reform, and constitutional law. Waldman, a constitutional lawyer and writer who is an expert on the presidency and American democracy, has led the center since 2005. He was a member of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States in 2021.

Waldman was director of speechwriting for President Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1999, serving as assistant to the president. He was responsible for writing or editing nearly two thousand speeches, including four State of the Union and two inaugural addresses. He was special assistant to the president for policy coordination from 1993 to 1995.

Waldman is the author of The Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America (Simon & Schuster, 2023). The Supreme Court’s 2022–2023 term, he argues, was the most consequential in decades, with decisions such as Dobbs, Bruen, and West Virginia v. EPA reshaping American politics. Waldman explains how the Court has gained so much power over Americans’ lives with so little connection to the public will. He shows the supermajority’s dangerous reliance on a newfound, radical “originalism.” He traces the similarities between this Court and its most activist and controversial predecessors. And he offers a path forward. Kirkus Reviews called it “a damning account of a Supreme Court gone wildly activist in shredding the Constitution.” Jane Mayer of the New Yorker called The Supermajority “nothing less than a public service.”

Waldman is also the author of The Fight to Vote (Simon & Schuster, 2016, reissued in 2022), a history of the struggle to win voting rights for all citizens. The Fight to Vote was a Washington Post notable nonfiction book for 2016. The  Post wrote, “Waldman’s important and engaging account demonstrates that over the long term, the power of the democratic ideal prevails — as long as the people so demand.” The Wall Street Journal called it “an engaging, concise history of American voting practices,” and the Miami Herald described it as “an important history in an election year.” 

Waldman is also the author of The Second Amendment: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 2014). Publishers Weekly called it “the best narrative of its subject.” In the New York Times, Joe Nocera called it “rigorous, scholarly, but accessible.” The Los Angeles Times wrote, “[Waldman’s] calm tone and habit of taking the long view offers a refreshing tonic in this most loaded of debates.” In a Cardozo Law Review symposium devoted to the book, a historian wrote, “The Second Amendment is, without doubt, among the best efforts at melding constitutional history and constitutional law on any topic — at least since the modern revival of originalism two generations ago.”

His previous books are My Fellow Americans: The Most Important Speeches of America’s Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama (2003, reissued 2010), A Return to Common Sense (2007), POTUS Speaks (2000), and Who Robbed America? A Citizen’s Guide to the S&L Scandal (1990).

His frequent appearances on television and radio to discuss policy, the presidency, and the law include 60 Minutes, All In with Chris Hayes, CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, Meet the Press Daily, Morning Joe, NBC Nightly News, Nightline, PBS NewsHour, and the Rachel Maddow Show, as well as NPR’s All Things Considered, Fresh Air, and Morning Edition. He writes for Bloomberg, Democracy, the New York Times, Politico, Reuters, Slate, the Daily Beast, the Washington Post, and other national publications.

He is a graduate of Columbia College and NYU School of Law.

The Common Good is a leading pro-democracy, nonprofit organization which features important leaders and experts to inform engagement in the political process. Here are just a few of their hundreds of past speakers: Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush; Secretaries John Kerry, Antony Blinken, Henry Kissinger, Leon Panetta, and Jeh Johnson; Majority Leaders Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer; Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Congressman John Lewis, Senators Lindsey Graham, Elissa Slotkin, and John McCain; Governors Ned Lamont, Kathy Hochul, Tim Kaine, and Larry Hogan; foreign affairs experts such as Richard Haass and Ian Bremmer, U.S. and foreign Ambassadors such as Frank Wisner and Martin Indyk, Ron Prosor (Is), François Delattre (Fr), activists like Gloria Steinem, Jose Antonio Vargas, and Lily Ledbetter, historians like Jon Meacham, Heather Cox Richardson, and H. W. Brands ,journalists, authors and editors such as Marty Baron, Harry Evans, and Jill Abramson, Fareed Zakaria, Carl Bernstein, Lawrence Wright, Steve Coll, and Gillian Tett; entertainment figures such as Denzel Washington, Jane Fonda, Kevin Costner and Chevy Chase; business leaders such as Mike Bloomberg, Ray Dalio, Glenn Hutchins and John Bogle, political strategists like Paul Begala, Tim Miller, and Donna Brazile, commentator/ broadcast journalists like Lesley Stahl, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Ari Melber, Jonathan Capehart, Molly Jong-Fast, and Gayle King, and many others. Thousands of audience members have gained invaluable insights about today’s current events from their distinguished roster of speakers. 

Patricia Duff founded The Common Good in 2007, with a goal of bringing together major policy leaders in government and authoritative figures in business, media, journalism and academia, to speak candidly on the most important issues of today.  These conversations are meant to provide ideas and information, encourage citizen participation, and find common ground. The Common Good is rooted in Show Coalition, an influential, entertainment based organization which she and others started in 1988.  Patricia’s work has spanned the entertainment and political worlds. She worked as vice president for two of the country’s leading political strategy and consulting firms in Washington D.C., and has lent her energy and expertise to dozens of political races across the country, including several Presidential election efforts.

Patricia also served on the Congressional investigative committee that reexamined the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. She had her own political talk show on television, has led women’s outreach for political campaign efforts, and has served on a number of boards, including the Library of Congress Board of Trustees, Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service Board of Advisors, and the board of the Lincoln Center Film Society.  Duff is a member of the Economic Club and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Trained as an historian, Ellen Chesler, Ph.D. is author of the critically praised biography, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, which has remained in print for 34 years. She has co-edited two anthologies, Where Human Rights Begin (2005)  and Women and Girls Rising (2015), and she has written more than 100  essays and articles in prominent publications.  Early in her career she  served in government as Chief of Staff to New York City Council President, Carol Bellamy, the first woman ever elected to a citywide office. And she later spent a decade as a senior fellow at the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, overseeing a broad portfolio of grants to organizations and individuals advancing and protecting women's rights around the world.  Long active in progressive politics, she is recognized for both the practical and intellectual perspectives she brings to her work..  With her husband, Matthew Mallow, she has been a Hamptons homeowner since 1983.