Roger Pilon is vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute where he holds the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies and directs the Center for Constitutional Studies, which he founded in 1989.  Prior to joining Cato he held five senior posts in the Reagan Administration.  From 1981 to 1982 he was special assistant to the director of the Office of Personnel Management; from 1982 to 1984 he was special assistant to the general counsel of OPM; and from 1984 to 1986 he served as senior professor at OPM's Federal Executive Institute.  In January of 1986 Dr. Pilon moved to the State Department to become director of policy for the Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, serving in Geneva in February of 1987 as principal advisor to the head of the U.S. delegation to the 43rd session of the U.N. Human Rights Commission.  Then in March of 1987 he was appointed as the first director of the new Asylum Policy and Review Unit of the Department of Justice, where he served until his move to Cato in October of 1988.

 A philosopher of law by profession, Dr. Pilon did his undergraduate work at Columbia University, earning a B.A. in philosophy in 1971.  He did his graduate work at the University of Chicago, earning an M.A. in 1972 and a Ph.D. in 1979, both in philosophy.  In 1988 he earned a J.D. from the George Washington University School of Law.  He taught philosophy at the California State University at Sonoma in 1977 and philosophy of law at the Emory University School of Law from 1978 to 1979.  From 1979 to 1980 he was a national fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University and from 1980 to 1981 an Institute for Educational Affairs fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies in Menlo Park, California.
 
 Dr. Pilon has published and lectured widely in the area of moral, political, and legal theory.  He testifies often before Congress and is a frequent guest on television and radio programs discussing legal issues of the day.  In 1989 the National Press Foundation and the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution presented him with the Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution.

 Dr. Pilon is married to Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon who is vice president for programs at the International Foundation for Election Systems and an adjunct professor at the George Washington University.  The Pilons have two children.