William H. (Chip) Mellor serves as chairman and founding general counsel of the Institute for Justice. He cofounded IJ in 1991 and served as president and general counsel until 2015. He has litigated cutting-edge constitutional cases, notably achieving the first federal appellate court victory for economic liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment since the New Deal. While Mellor was president, IJ litigated five US Supreme Court cases, winning four.
Under Mellor’s leadership, IJ has grown from a five-person start-up into a law firm with a nearly hundred-member staff, including over forty attorneys and an annual budget of $20 million.
Dick Carpenter is a director of strategic research at the Institute for Justice and a professor at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.