Constitutional Chats: Hosted by Janine Turner and Cathy Gillespie
Tuesday September 1 at 2PM EDT/1PM CDT
Breaking Down The Constitution: Articles IV & V
Breaking Down The Constitution: Articles IV & V
Janine Turner, Cathy Gillespie, and Constituting America’s Student Ambassadors, Tova Love Kaplan and Dakare Chatman, chat with Constitutional experts on hot-topic issues via Zoom!
Thomas L. Jipping is deputy director of the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and a senior legal fellow in the Center, which is part of the Institute for Constitutional Government at Heritage.
Tom joined Heritage in May 2018 after 15 years on the staff of U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), including several as his chief counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He spent the previous 13 years at two public policy organizations: Concerned Women for America, where he was senior fellow in legal studies; and the Free Congress Foundation, where Tom served as Vice President for Policy and Director of the Center for Law and Democracy.
Tom has developed a national reputation, among both liberals and conservatives, as an expert in the federal judiciary and, in particular, the appointment of federal judges. The Nation magazine, for example, has dubbed him “the right’s ablest analyst of confirmation fights.” At Tom’s final meeting of the Judiciary Committee in April 2018, Senator Hatch said that Tom is a “true expert” who “knows everything there is to know about nominations.”
Tom’s scholarship includes articles in law and public policy journals as well as hundreds of op-eds and articles in both print and online publications. He has presented papers at conferences including the American Political Science Association and testified before legislative committees in the U.S. Senate and House and in several states.
Tom received a B.A. with honors from Calvin College and both an M.A. in political science and a J.D., cum laude, from the State University of New York at Buffalo. While at SUNY-Buffalo Law School, Tom was a founding member of the Buffalo Federalist Society and served as the Head Note and Comment Editor of the Buffalo Law Review. Before coming to Washington, Tom clerked for Judge William D. Hutchinson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Tom lives in Fairfax, Virginia, and is an active member of New Hope Presbyterian Church.
Actress Janine Turner is famous for her role as Maggie O’Connell in televisions’ Northern Exposure. She is the Founder and Co-President of Constituting America which launched in 2010. She is still acting but she is also actively teaching kids about the U.S. Constitution given over 540 speeches to classrooms across the country.
Cathy Gillespie is the co-president of Constituting America and one of 16 private citizens serving on the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, helping organize the celebration of our country’s 250th birthday in 2026! She is a former Congressional Chief of Staff and former Commissioner of the White House Fellows Commission.
Tova Love Kaplan is sixteen years old and lives in Chicago, Illinois. She currently serves as the National Youth Director for Constituting America, and runs the National Youth Advisory Council. She is a three-time winner of the “We the Future” contest in the Entrepreneurial (where she created a marketing plan), PSA (entitled “Know Your Rights. Read The Constitution”) and STEM (where she created an app). She is passionate about educating and empowering young people to use their constitutional rights!
Constituting America Student Ambassador Dakare Chatman is 16 years old, and is currently a junior, full-time college student in South Carolina. He has won Constituting America’s We The Future Contest twice, once for best PSA where he reminded viewers the Constitution is “An American Thing, So Know It” and twice for his short film “Man On The Street.” He is also actively involved in our National Youth Advisory Board. He’s a working actor seen most recently in HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones and on April 15 in Netflix’s: Outer Banks. Dakare wishes to be an actor, but also a politician. But says you must be an actor to be a politician.