Morton Rosenberg
Morton Rosenberg, a graduate of New York University (BA, 1957) and the Harvard Law School (LLB, 1960), was a Specialist in American Public Law with the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress for thirty-five years. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow at Good Government Now and a Constitution Fellow at The Constitution Project. He authored the “Inherent Contempt Procedure Rule for the U.S. House” Good Government Now is recommending to develop an effective capability for the House to enforce its subpoenas and contempt citations. Read full bio.
Michael L. Stern
Michael L. Stern specializes in legal issues affecting Congress and the legislative process, including congressional ethics, elections, investigations, lobbying and constitutional reform. He is a Senior Fellow at Good Government Now and the author of the “Rule on Information Requests and Subpoenas to the Executive Branch” GGN is proposing to strengthen enforcement of congressional subpoenas of federal government officials.
Mr. Stern served as Senior Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives from 1996 to 2004. He later served as Deputy Staff Director for Investigations for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Special Counsel to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Prior to his congressional service, he was an associate at Shaw Pittman and clerked for Chief Judge Charles Clark, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He has co-chaired the D.C. Bar’s Administrative Law and Agency Practice Section and served on the ABA Task Force on Lobbying Reform.
He currently serves on the board of the Committee for a Fiscal Responsibility Amendment, is a founding member of the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, and sits on the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council. Michael is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and Haverford College where he majored in History. He blogs about congressional legal issues at www.pointoforder.com.
Jason Foster
Jason Foster conducted oversight and investigations as counsel to four congressional committees in the U.S. House and Senate before becoming a Senior Fellow at Good Government Now. For 14 of his 22 years on Capitol Hill, he served as counsel to Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), working closely with whistleblowers and offices of inspectors general to help Congress oversee the Executive Branch. He helped Grassley create the Senate’s bipartisan Whistleblower Protection Caucus and pass the FBI Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2016. He assisted Grassley in strengthening inspector general independence and access to agency records through the Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2016.
Mr Foster also helped negotiate policy concessions for greater voluntary access to Executive Branch information for all Members of Congress following a controversial Justice Department legal opinion threatening to limit access to only committee chairs. He has advised congressional committees in hundreds of disputes with the Executive Branch over access to documents and witnesses in a broad array of contexts over the years.
As Chief Investigative Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Foster led its oversight and investigations team in reviewing allegations of waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, and misconduct at the Justice Department and federal law enforcement agencies. He also conducted oversight of the government’s response to the financial crisis for the Senate Finance Committee, helped negotiate legislation implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and investigated controversial Presidential pardons for the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee.
He is an Arkansas native and a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center.
Teka Thomas
Teka Thomas is an entrepreneur and business attorney. He is the founder of Vrypac LLC, a sports and travel accessories company. He also has a small business law practice in Washington DC. Mr. Thomas served in the U.S. Air Force as a procurement officer, and later at National Defense University as a consultant on procurement reform. He has been published in the defense press writing about procurement and domestic security issues.
Mr. Thomas has a BBA in political science from the University of Miami, a Masters in government from Harvard, and a JD from the University of San Francisco. He has extensive experience in political campaigns and voter protection.
Mattew L. Fabisch, Esq.
Matthew Fabisch is a distinguished attorney, judge, and policy advocate who is devoted to promoting the fundamental political and civil rights espoused in the federal and state constitutions. He serves as President and General Counsel of the Stephen Hopkins Center for Civil Rights, a public interest law firm dedicated to defending the rights of citizens. His public interest work includes assignments as a probate court judge, Policy Director for a campaign for state Attorney General, and Executive Director and General Counsel of the Rhode Island Republican Party.
His private practice experience includes service as managing partner of Fabisch Law, an associate at Cicione and Associates, and an associate at Smith and Brink. Mr. Fabisch assists clients and their children with a full range of elder law services including estate planning, wills, trusts, probate, medicaid planning, disability planning, and tax planning. He also practices in the areas of Bankruptcy and Appellate matters.
Mr. Fabisch attended Roger Williams University Law School where he was the Editor-In-Chief of the Roger Williams University Law Review and President of the Federalist Society. He also served as a law clerk for the Rhode Island Superior Court and a law clerk at the Institute of Justice. Mr. Fabisch is a founding board member of Good Government Now.
Brad Miller
Brad Miller represented North Carolina’s 13 th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2003-2013. Prior to that, he served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 1993-1994 and North Carolina Senate from 1997-2002. He returned to private legal practice in 2013 after leaving Congress and is now Of Counsel to Guttman, Buschner & Brooks PLLC. Mr. Miller has served as a Congressional Fellow at Good Government Now since June 2019.
He is a distinguished expert on congressional oversight and investigations, financial regulation and reform, environmental issues, and health. He was the principal author of an amicus curiae brief on behalf of Members of Congress to oppose President Trump’s pardon of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio for criminal contempt of court as an unconstitutional encroachment against the inherent contempt authority of the judicial branch. Mr. Miller also authored the “Special Criminal Contempt of Congress Procedures Act of 2009” which sought to ensure that criminal contempt of Congress citations would be prosecuted by a court-appointed special counsel if the Department of Justice failed to do so itself as requied by law.
As chairman of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science Committee, Brad led investigations into the health effects of environmental exposures, including the contamination by formaldehyde of trailers that FEMA provided families displaced by Hurricane Katrina; the contamination by lead of drinking water in Washington, D.C. and other major cities; and the contamination by toxic chemicals of drinking water to which a million Marines and their family members were exposed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina over a thirty-year period. See full bio.
Dr. William J. Murphy
Dr. William J. Murphy is the founder and president of Good Government Now where he advocates for proposals to strengthen congressional institutional capacities for oversight and investigation of the executive branch.
Dr. Murphy is active with several advocacy and policy research organizations. He is a policy advisor to The Center for Constitutional Reform at The Heartland Institute and a Co-Chair of Physicians Against Drug Shortages, an advocacy group dedicated to promoting competition in the pharmaceutical and medical product markets.
He is an Associate Professor of Social Science at the New England Institute of Technology in East Greenwich, RI where he teaches American government, economics, and U.S. national security policy. He previously served as a lecturer in the International Relations Program at the University of Pennsylvania, an adjunct faculty member at Villanova University, and a visiting professor at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea.
Dr. Murphy holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania as well as an A.B. in Government from Harvard College. Dr. Murphy is also a veteran of enlisted and officer service in the armor branch of the United States Army from 1988-1991, including assignments as a tank platoon leader and battalion staff officer with the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea.