Jonathan Emord was born on January 16, 1961 in Brockton, Massachusetts. He has been practicing constitutional and administrative law before the federal courts and agencies since 1985. Having begun his career as an attorney in the Federal Communications Commission during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, Emord has maintained an abiding conviction to achieve full First Amendment protection for the freedoms of speech and press. In 1991, he authored the critically acclaimed Freedom, Technology, and the First Amendment in which he chronicled the intellectual foundations of the First Amendment and advocated replacing government control over the airwaves with a title registry, private property rights approach. Emord has practiced law for a number of well-respected firms, including Wiley, Rein & Fielding, and served as a Cato Institute Vice-President.
He practices food and drug law, deceptive advertising law, and libel law, and he served as lead counsel in the Pearson v. Shalala (D.C. Cir. 1999); Pearson v. Shalala (D.C.D.C. 2001); Pearson v. Thompson (D.C.D.C. 2001); and Whitaker v. Thompson (D.C.D.C. 2002) cases, holding FDA censorship of nutrient-disease relationship claims unconstitutional. He also served as lead counsel in Nutraceutical Corp. v. Crawford (D.Ut.2005). Emord is admitted to practice in the states of Illinois, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. He is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court; the United States Courts of Appeal for the D.C., Fourth, Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits; the United States Court of International Trade; and the United States District Courts for the District of Columbia, Eastern District of Virginia, Northern District of Illinois, and Western District of Wisconsin. He is a Member of the Governing Council of the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. He is a 1982 graduate (B.A., Political Science and History) of the University of Illinois where he was an Edmund J. James Scholar and a 1985 graduate (J.D.) of DePaul University.