Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Joe Davis joined Becket in 2017 as Legal Counsel. His work at Becket has included appellate litigation in both federal and state courts, including representing religious entities and governments sued because of their openness to religious expression in precedent-setting victories before the Third, Fifth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits. Joe has appeared in national media to discuss religious liberty issues, including on Fox News and numerous radio and print outlets, and his academic work on topics related to religious liberty has been published at venues including the Yale Law Journal Forum and the Notre Dame Law Review Online.
Before joining Becket, Joe worked as a litigator at Jones Walker LLP in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he worked on a variety of matters from commercial and criminal litigation to bankruptcy. From 2014 to 2015, he clerked for the Honorable E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Joe graduated summa cum laude from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2014, where he served on the Virginia Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. While in law school, Joe studied religious liberty law with one of the top religious liberty scholars and litigators in the nation. He also worked as a researcher for the law school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. Before going to law school, Joe received his B.A. in Economics with a minor in Religion, summa cum laude, from Mississippi State University.
Joe is married to his high school sweetheart. When he’s not helping her corral their four young children, he tends to be reading the classics, watching college football, or listening to his vinyl collection.
Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Virginia School of Law; Alice McKean Young Regents Chair in Law Emeritus, University of Texas
Douglas Laycock is perhaps the nation’s leading authority on the law of religious liberty and also on the law of remedies. He has taught and written about these topics for more than four decades at the University of Chicago, the University of Texas, the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia. He retired from teaching at UVA Law School in May 2023.
Laycock has testified frequently before Congress and has argued many cases in the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, where he has served as lead counsel in six cases and has also filed influential amicus briefs. He is the author (co-author in the most recent edition) of the leading casebook Modern American Remedies, the award-winning monograph The Death of the Irreparable Injury Rule and many articles in leading law reviews. He co-edited a collection of essays, Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty.
His many writings on religious liberty have been republished in a five-volume collection:
Laycock resigned from the council and as first vice president of the American Law Institute to become co-reporter for the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Remedies. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Nelson was confirmed to the Ninth Circuit in October 2018, as the youngest Circuit Judge to serve from Idaho and he has chambers in his hometown of Idaho Falls. Prior to his confirmation, Judge Nelson served for nine years as General Counsel of Idaho Falls-based Melaleuca, Inc., a consumer goods company. He previously worked in Washington, DC, where he served in all three branches of the federal government, including as Special Counsel for Supreme Court nominations to the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; Deputy General Counsel to the White House Office of Management and Budget; Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice; and a law clerk to Judge Henderson of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has argued in most of the federal courts of appeals and worked on dozens of Supreme Court briefs. He started in the Washington, DC office of Sidley Austin as an appellate lawyer, after clerking for Judges Mosk and Brower of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal at The Hague, and for now-Judge Tom Griffith, then-Senate Legal Counsel, during the impeachment trial of President Clinton. Judge Nelson earned his B.A. from Brigham Young University and his J.D., with honors, from BYU Law School. Judge Nelson has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1998.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Whitney Hermandorfer is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump (R) on May 12, 2025, and confirmed by the United States Senate on July 14, 2025.
Prior to her appointment, she worked in the Office of the Tennessee Attorney General as Director of the Strategic Litigation Unit. In that role, Whitney focused on leading constitutional, statutory, and administrative-law challenges to federal agency action, as well as on defending the State in complex matters at the trial and appellate level.
Whitney previously worked at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, DC, where she focused on appellate and administrative-law litigation. Whitney clerked for Justice Samuel Alito in the OT 2018 Supreme Court term and for Justice Amy Coney Barrett during her inaugural OT 2020 term. Prior to that, Whitney clerked for then-Judge Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Richard Leon on the U.S. District Court for D.C. Whitney is a graduate of Princeton University and George Washington University Law School.
Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Lori Windham is vice president and senior counsel at Becket, where she has represented clients on cutting-edge religious freedom issues since 2005. She has represented parties before the Supreme Court, arguing Becket’s unanimous victory on behalf of foster families in Fulton v. Philadelphia, as well as working with the Becket team on its Supreme Court victories in Hosanna-Tabor, Hobby Lobby, and Little Sisters of the Poor. She won a victory for the world’s largest religious media network in EWTN v. Azar, staving off millions of dollars in government fines under unlawful the HHS mandate. She has won more than a dozen victories in federal appellate courts, including successful defense of cities and school districts sued for accommodating religion, victories for houses of worship facing discrimination in the land use process, and overturning a multimillion-dollar judgment against a major evangelical ministry. She recently won a first-in-the-nation injunction for an adoption agency threatened with shutdown for its religious beliefs.
Recognized in Washington as an expert on religious freedom issues, Lori has testified in Congressional oversight hearings before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Outside Washington, Lori is sought-after speaker on First Amendment law, including appearances at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Central European University, and many others.
In addition to these venues, Lori also defends her clients in the media, including television appearances on CBS This Morning, Hardball, CNN Tonight, On the Record, America’s Newsroom, Opinion Journal, and many others. Her work has been covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and dozens of other papers. She is also a regular guest on radio, with appearances on shows ranging from Sean Hannity to NPR.
Lori has successfully represented a wide array of clients, including a Santeria priest prohibited from making animal sacrifices, synagogues prohibited from building on their own land, and religious student organizations penalized for their religious speech. One of her most challenging cases involved travel to a remote farming community to ensure that members of the local Amish community were not jailed for using their traditional building methods.
Lori is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned her B.A. summa cum laude at Abilene Christian University. She has served on the Board of Visitors of Abilene Christian University and received the ACU Young Alumnus of the Year award for her work at Becket. She sits on the board of Dominion Christian School and the visiting committee of the Fund for American Studies’ Summer Law Fellowship.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Whitney Hermandorfer is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump (R) on May 12, 2025, and confirmed by the United States Senate on July 14, 2025.
Prior to her appointment, she worked in the Office of the Tennessee Attorney General as Director of the Strategic Litigation Unit. In that role, Whitney focused on leading constitutional, statutory, and administrative-law challenges to federal agency action, as well as on defending the State in complex matters at the trial and appellate level.
Whitney previously worked at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, DC, where she focused on appellate and administrative-law litigation. Whitney clerked for Justice Samuel Alito in the OT 2018 Supreme Court term and for Justice Amy Coney Barrett during her inaugural OT 2020 term. Prior to that, Whitney clerked for then-Judge Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Richard Leon on the U.S. District Court for D.C. Whitney is a graduate of Princeton University and George Washington University Law School.
Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Lori Windham is vice president and senior counsel at Becket, where she has represented clients on cutting-edge religious freedom issues since 2005. She has represented parties before the Supreme Court, arguing Becket’s unanimous victory on behalf of foster families in Fulton v. Philadelphia, as well as working with the Becket team on its Supreme Court victories in Hosanna-Tabor, Hobby Lobby, and Little Sisters of the Poor. She won a victory for the world’s largest religious media network in EWTN v. Azar, staving off millions of dollars in government fines under unlawful the HHS mandate. She has won more than a dozen victories in federal appellate courts, including successful defense of cities and school districts sued for accommodating religion, victories for houses of worship facing discrimination in the land use process, and overturning a multimillion-dollar judgment against a major evangelical ministry. She recently won a first-in-the-nation injunction for an adoption agency threatened with shutdown for its religious beliefs.
Recognized in Washington as an expert on religious freedom issues, Lori has testified in Congressional oversight hearings before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Outside Washington, Lori is sought-after speaker on First Amendment law, including appearances at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Central European University, and many others.
In addition to these venues, Lori also defends her clients in the media, including television appearances on CBS This Morning, Hardball, CNN Tonight, On the Record, America’s Newsroom, Opinion Journal, and many others. Her work has been covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and dozens of other papers. She is also a regular guest on radio, with appearances on shows ranging from Sean Hannity to NPR.
Lori has successfully represented a wide array of clients, including a Santeria priest prohibited from making animal sacrifices, synagogues prohibited from building on their own land, and religious student organizations penalized for their religious speech. One of her most challenging cases involved travel to a remote farming community to ensure that members of the local Amish community were not jailed for using their traditional building methods.
Lori is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned her B.A. summa cum laude at Abilene Christian University. She has served on the Board of Visitors of Abilene Christian University and received the ACU Young Alumnus of the Year award for her work at Becket. She sits on the board of Dominion Christian School and the visiting committee of the Fund for American Studies’ Summer Law Fellowship.
Distinguished Research Professor, Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government, University of Notre Dame
Donald L. Drakeman is Distinguished Research Professor in the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame, and a Fellow of the Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise at the University of Cambridge. His writings have been cited by the Supreme Courts of the United States and the Philippines. He has published seven books, including The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Why We Need the Humanities (Palgrave, 2016), and Church, State, and Original Intent (Cambridge University Press, 2010). He received an A.B. magna cum laude from Dartmouth College; a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar; and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and he was the founding chair of the Advisory Council for the James Madison Program on American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.
UC Foundation Assistant Professor, U.T. Chattanooga
James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Erik Money is a third-year law student at the University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota).
Assistant Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Nathaniel M. Fouch is an Assistant Professor of Law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. He previously clerked at every level of the state judiciary, including for Justice Pat DeWine of the Ohio Supreme Court. Professor Fouch was the founding president of both the Dayton Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society and the Dayton Catholic Lawyers Guild. He earned his B.A. from Berea College and his J.D. cum laude from the University of St. Thomas School of Law. His work on the Ohio Constitution and state constitutionalism has been cited by the Ohio Supreme Court. Professor Fouch lives in Dayton, Ohio, with his wife, Theresa, and their three young children.
Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence, Independence Institute
Professor Robert G. Natelson is a constitutional scholar and author.
Rob’s constitutional scholarship has been cited repeatedly by justices and parties at the U.S. Supreme Court—as well as by federal appeals courts, and at least 18 state supreme courts.
Rob’s research into the Constitution’s original meaning has carried him to libraries throughout the United States and in Britain, including four months at Oxford University. His books and articles span many different parts of the Constitution, including groundbreaking studies of the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Indian Commerce Clause, federalism, Founding-Era interpretation, regulation of elections, and the amendment process of Article V. He created the first-ever online bibliography for 18th century materials used in constitutional research. He is a contributing author to the Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States (on Magna Carta). He contributed eight essays to the third edition of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution: five on the amendment procedure and one each on the Guarantee Clause, the Postal Clause, and the Recess Appointments Clause.
U.S. Supreme Court justices have relied explicitly on Rob’s research in 41 citations in 13 separate cases.
Executive in Residence, Wake Forest University School of Business
John Allison is an Executive in Residence at the Wake Forest School of Business. He is a member of the Cato Institute’s Board of Directors and Chairman of the Executive Advisory Council of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives. Allison was president and CEO of the Cato Institute from October 2012 to April 2015. Prior to joining Cato, Allison was chairman and CEO of BB&T Corporation, the 10th-largest financial services holding company headquartered in the United States. During his tenure as CEO from 1989 to 2008, BB&T grew from $4.5 billion to $152 billion in assets. He was recognized by theHarvard Business Reviewas one of the top 100 most successful CEOs in the world over the last decade.
Allison has received the Corning Award for Distinguished Leadership, been inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from theAmerican Banker. He is the author of The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism Is the World Economy’s Only Hope and The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why the Future of Business Depends on the Return to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. In addition, he is a former Distinguished Professor of Practice at Wake Forest University School of Business, and serves on the Board of Visitors at the business schools at Wake Forest, Duke, and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.
Allison is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. He received his master’s degree in management from Duke University and is also a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking. Allison is the recipient of six honorary doctorate degrees.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
The Honorable Whitney Hermandorfer is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump (R) on May 12, 2025, and confirmed by the United States Senate on July 14, 2025.
Prior to her appointment, she worked in the Office of the Tennessee Attorney General as Director of the Strategic Litigation Unit. In that role, Whitney focused on leading constitutional, statutory, and administrative-law challenges to federal agency action, as well as on defending the State in complex matters at the trial and appellate level.
Whitney previously worked at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, DC, where she focused on appellate and administrative-law litigation. Whitney clerked for Justice Samuel Alito in the OT 2018 Supreme Court term and for Justice Amy Coney Barrett during her inaugural OT 2020 term. Prior to that, Whitney clerked for then-Judge Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Richard Leon on the U.S. District Court for D.C. Whitney is a graduate of Princeton University and George Washington University Law School.
Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Lori Windham is vice president and senior counsel at Becket, where she has represented clients on cutting-edge religious freedom issues since 2005. She has represented parties before the Supreme Court, arguing Becket’s unanimous victory on behalf of foster families in Fulton v. Philadelphia, as well as working with the Becket team on its Supreme Court victories in Hosanna-Tabor, Hobby Lobby, and Little Sisters of the Poor. She won a victory for the world’s largest religious media network in EWTN v. Azar, staving off millions of dollars in government fines under unlawful the HHS mandate. She has won more than a dozen victories in federal appellate courts, including successful defense of cities and school districts sued for accommodating religion, victories for houses of worship facing discrimination in the land use process, and overturning a multimillion-dollar judgment against a major evangelical ministry. She recently won a first-in-the-nation injunction for an adoption agency threatened with shutdown for its religious beliefs.
Recognized in Washington as an expert on religious freedom issues, Lori has testified in Congressional oversight hearings before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Outside Washington, Lori is sought-after speaker on First Amendment law, including appearances at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Central European University, and many others.
In addition to these venues, Lori also defends her clients in the media, including television appearances on CBS This Morning, Hardball, CNN Tonight, On the Record, America’s Newsroom, Opinion Journal, and many others. Her work has been covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and dozens of other papers. She is also a regular guest on radio, with appearances on shows ranging from Sean Hannity to NPR.
Lori has successfully represented a wide array of clients, including a Santeria priest prohibited from making animal sacrifices, synagogues prohibited from building on their own land, and religious student organizations penalized for their religious speech. One of her most challenging cases involved travel to a remote farming community to ensure that members of the local Amish community were not jailed for using their traditional building methods.
Lori is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned her B.A. summa cum laude at Abilene Christian University. She has served on the Board of Visitors of Abilene Christian University and received the ACU Young Alumnus of the Year award for her work at Becket. She sits on the board of Dominion Christian School and the visiting committee of the Fund for American Studies’ Summer Law Fellowship.
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Joseph Davis, Douglas Laycock, Michael W. McConnell, Ryan D. Nelson
In this Federalist Society America250 series, experts analyze modern legal and policy debates through the...
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Whitney D. Hermandorfer, Lori Windham
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Litigation Update: Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany v. Vullo
Whitney D. Hermandorfer, Lori Windham
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Litigation Update: Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany v. Vullo
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Topics
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How the Founders’ Natural Law Theory Illuminates the Original Meaning of Free Exercise
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14th Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture
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Good evening. It’s really both a pleasure and honor to be here. I want to...