Pendley to Speak at Joint Stockmen’s Convention

William Perry Pendley, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, will be the keynote speaker at the 2014 Joint Stockmen’s Convention Family Luncheon, sponsored by Farm Credit of New Mexico, on Friday, December 5. 

“Mountain States Legal Foundation is one of the biggest champions that we in agriculture – as individuals, as landowners and as family enterprises - have,” said Jose Varela Lopez, New Mexico Cattle Growers Association (NMCGA) President, La Cieneguilla.  “We are looking forward to Mr. Pendley’s insights.”

The Mountain States Legal Foundation is a grassroots organization that provides legal representation to individuals, local governments and small businesses to protect constitutional freedoms, individual liberty and property rights.

Pendley, a native of Wyoming, received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Economics and Political Science from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He was a Captain in the United States Marine Corps, after which he received his J.D. from the University of Wyoming College of Law.  He served as an attorney to former Senator Clifford P. Hansen (R-Wyoming) and to the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. During the Reagan Administration, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy and Minerals of the Department of Interior, where he authored President Reagan's National Minerals Policy and Exclusive Economic Zone proclamation. He was a consultant to former Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman, Jr., and was engaged in the private practice of law in the Washington, D.C., area before his return to the West in 1989. 

He has argued cases before the Supreme Court of the United States as well as various federal courts of appeals; he won what Time called a "legal earthquake" when the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in the historic Adarand (equal protection) case. His monthly column, Summary Judgment, appears throughout the country; he is the author of four books: It Takes A Hero (1994); War on the West (1995); Warriors for the West (2006); and Sagebrush Rebel (2013).

The annual Joint Stockmen’s Convention, set for December 4-7 at the Albuquerque Marriott Pyramid North, brings together members of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association (NMCGA), the New Mexico Wool Growers, Inc. (NMWGI), Dairy Producers of New Mexico (DPNM), the New Mexico CowBelles (NMCB) and the New Mexico Federal Lands Council (NMFLC).  For more information, contact the NMCGA at (505) 247-0584 or visit www.nmagriculture.org.

-30-