Professor Dan Mandelker - is a leading scholar and teacher in land use law, environmental law, and state and local government law. He was the principal consultant and contributor to the American Planning Association’s model planning and zoning legislation project. He also was the principal author of amendments to the New Orleans city charter that require a comprehensive planning process and give the comprehensive plan the force of law. Additionally, he was also the principal consultant to a joint American Bar Association committee that prepared a model law for land use procedures that was adopted by the ABA House of Delegates. Mandelker received the ABA’s State and Local Government Section Daniel J. Curtin Lifetime Achievement Award. He has lectured abroad in England, Spain, Israel, and other countries.

Dwight Merriam represents developers, local governments, landowners, and advocacy groups in land development and conservation issues. He has published over 180 professional articles on land use law, co-edited Inclusionary Zoning Moves Downtown, co-authored The Takings Issue, and authored The Complete Guide to Zoning. He is a Fellow and past president of the American Institute of Certified Planners, a former director of the American Planning Association (APA) and a previous chair of APA’s Planning & Law Division. He is also a member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers and The Counselors of Real Estate, and he teaches land use law at Vermont Law School. Mr. Merriam received his B.A. in sociology, cum laude, from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was also elected to Phi Kappa Phi. He received his master of regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his J.D. at Yale Law School.

Professor Alan Weinstein holds a joint faculty appointment in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs and also serves as Director of the Colleges' JD/MPA and JD/MUPDD Dual Degree Programs and Law & Public Policy Program. He is a nationally recognized expert on planning law who writes and lectures extensively in this field. Professor Weinstein is a past-Chair of the Planning & Law Division of the American Planning Association (APA), is one of the twenty-eight planning law experts who serve as Reporters for APA's monthly journal, Planning & Environmental Law, and previously served as Chair of the Sub-Committee on Land Use & the First Amendment in the American Bar Association's Section of State & Local Government Law.

Eric Damian Kelly, Ph.D., FAICP is a professor of Urban Planning at Ball State University and vice president of Duncan Associates, planning consultants. He is a frequent litigation consultant and expert witness on cases involving the regulation of signs, billboards and/or sex businesses. He has consulted with more than 100 local governments in more than 35 states. Since 1995, Kelly has been general editor of the 10-volume Matthew Bender set Zoning and Land Use Controls. He is author or co-author of six technical reports published in the Planning Advisory Service Reports series of the American Planning Association; those include Everything you always wanted to know about regulating sex businesses with Connie Cooper. Kelly is a past national president of the American Planning Association, and in 1999, he was inducted as one of the first 49 members of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners. Kelly holds Master of City Planning and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in public policy from the Union Institute

CONNIE B. COOPER, FAICP, former national president of the American Planning Association, has more than 35 years of experience in planning and community development at the state, county, and local levels. This has included extensive experience throughout the US as a principal participant in the areas of urban redevelopment, strategic planning; comprehensive planning; zoning; and regulation of sexually oriented businesses. Cooper has partnered with Eric Damian Kelly assisting cities and counties in crafting sexually oriented businesses regulation in Arlington (TX), Biloxi, Detroit, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Kenton-Campbell Counties (KY), Memphis, Palm Beach County, and Toledo. Cooper has partnered with Terry Morgan, with Goins, Underkofler, Crawford & Langdon, on sexually oriented business ordinances for Cedar Hill, Denison, Kennedale, and Waxahachie and Ellis County (Texas). Cooper is the co-author with Eric Kelly of the PAS report, Everything you always wanted to know about regulating sex businesses. She is the former national president of the American Planning Association, former president of the American Society of Consulting Planners and was inducted into the 2000 class of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners.