When Apple unveiled the first iPhone in January 2007, most ordinary consumers rolled their eyes — "why would I need a phone to do all that?" Before long, however, Americans were buying smartphones in droves. By 2013, smartphones had overtaken "dumb phones" in global market share for the first time; they have never looked back.

Initially, the great attraction of smartphones was their ability to combine standard call and text features with access to every corner of the digital world in one convenient, handheld device. Email, online shopping, YouTube, you name it — anything you wanted to do on the internet, you could now do from your phone. Smartphones also came with built-in cameras, obviating the need to carry around a digital camera and enabling users to seamlessly upload and share pictures with one another.

March 22, 2024 marks Ed Whelan’s 20^th anniversary at EPPC. Ed joined EPPC as its President in March 2004 and served in that capacity until 2021. On stepping down as President, he was named EPPC Distinguished Senior Fellow and was awarded EPPC’s new Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies.

EPPC President Ryan Anderson hailed Ed’s twenty years at EPPC:

Ed Whelan’s tenure at EPPC is nothing short of remarkable. No one is a more reliable or sought-after Court watcher and commentator than Ed. His work directly resulted in the reshaping of the composition of our judiciary, with the overturning of Roe as perhaps his crowning accomplishment. He did all of this while for seventeen years he led EPPC as president. Taking EPPC from strength to strength, he built the institution with the best thinkers on the social and moral questions confronting our nation, garnering EPPC the rich reputation it rightly deserves.