Cato fights to preserve the separation of powers and the checks and balances that are essential to our constitutional order. Our scholars file amicus briefs in strategic cases—90 total briefs in 2025—with an emphasis on defending free speech, preserving economic liberties, and restoring the original balance of power that the Constitution’s Framers designed.

Stephen Richer, the former recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona, joined Cato in 2025 as an adjunct scholar and delivered this year’s B. Kenneth Simon Lecture at Cato’s 24th annual Constitution Day Conference.

Thomas A. Berry, director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, co-wrote Cato’s amicus brief for Trump v. Slaughter, defending the president’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter at the Federal Trade Commission and working to restore political accountability to the administrative state.

Ilya Somin, in addition to representing the five small businesses challenging the President’s Liberation Day tariffs at the Supreme Court, co-wrote briefs for Cato in two important property rights cases and in cases challenging the government’s more extreme immigration policies, including its claimed authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for any group of immigrants, including legal residents.

Cato’s efforts last year resulted directly in presidential pardons overturning a grave injustice. Two Florida dive guides, John Moore and Tanner Mansell, stumbled upon a fishing line upon which several sharks were hooked. Believing it to be illegal poaching, they released the sharks. The line, in fact, was part of a government project, and the government brought felony charges against them.

At trial, the jury was given instructions that were erroneous and incomplete, denying it full context. After agonizing deliberation that lasted longer than the trial itself, the jury reluctantly returned a guilty verdict.

Our system was carefully designed to avoid injustices like the ones inflicted upon Moore and Mansell. But the system we have today bears scant resemblance to the one so carefully constructed by the Framers in the Bill of Rights.

Senior Vice President for Legal Studies Clark Neily and Legal Fellow Mike Fox drew attention to the injustice Moore and Mansell faced through a Cato amicus brief, media coverage, testimony to Congress, and a cover article in Cato’s Free Society magazine.

In June 2025, Trump pardoned both men. Moore and Mansell publicly credited and thanked Cato for bringing national attention to their case and for helping them to secure a pardon.

Cato is using this momentum to push for lasting reforms that will protect more citizens from wrongful conviction. Our scholars strive to prevent people like Mansell and Moore from being prosecuted simply for doing what they believe is the right thing.