After Being Tapped for Interim Leadership Roles at Heritage, Legal Scholars Cully Stimson and Hans von Spakovsky Resign

Legal scholars Charles “Cully” Stimson and Hans von Spakovsky resigned from the Heritage Foundation on Monday afternoon, leaving additional leadership vacancies at the think tank’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies after more than a dozen staff resigned from the organization’s data, economic, and legal centers this past weekend.

In an email to staff Sunday evening confirming some of those weekend departures, Heritage president, Kevin Roberts, had announced that he’d tapped Stimson to lead the Meese Center on an “interim basis, with assistance from Hans von Spakovsky.”

Those positions are now vacant as of this afternoon. “It is with a heavy heart and profound sadness that we resign our positions as Deputy Director and Senior Legal Fellow, respectively, of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal & Judicial Studies, effective immediately,” the two scholars wrote in a joint resignation email to Roberts and Heritage Foundation executive vice president Derrick Morgan. “We joined Heritage because of its leadership in the conservative movement, guided by Ed Feulner and General Meese for over 40 years. We regret leaving what has long been the premier conservative institution where we have spent so much of our legal careers but feel we can no longer carry out that mission established by them.”

Their resignations were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.