Garwood Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow, James Madison Pr, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr.- Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. This fall, Professor Forte will be the Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, and Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.
During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court, and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting which gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before the state legislatures of Ohio, Kansas, and Idaho as well as the New York City Council. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2003, Dr. Forte was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Trento and returned there in 2004 as a Visiting Professor. For the academic year, 2008-2009, Professor Forte was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecturer at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and he has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions. His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, and Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center. He has been appointed to the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also been a Civil War re-enactor and a Merit Badge Counselor for the Boy Scouts.
He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d edition (2014), published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.
His teaching competencies include Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Islamic Law, Jurisprudence, Natural Law, International Law, International Human Rights, the Presidency, and Constitutional History.
Professor of Law and Faculty Director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, Georgetown University Law Center
Stephanie Barclay is a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School, and the Faculty Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Her research focuses on the role our different democratic institutions play in protecting minority rights, particularly at the intersection of free speech and religious exercise. Barclay‘s work is published or is forthcoming in leading journals such as the Harvard Law Review, the Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal Forum. One of her articles was also selected for the 2020 Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. Her work has been featured in many media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg BNA, The Hill, and Law 360. And her work has also been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Prior to joining Georgetown, Barclay was twice voted Professor of the Year. Barclay has also litigated constitutional cases at both the trial and appellate level, including before the U.S. Supreme Court. Barclay served as a law clerk to Judge N. Randy Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and to Justice Neil M. Gorsuch of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Barclay is a Faculty Affiliate at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School; and she is a Nootbaar Fellow at the Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics at Pepperdine University. She currently serves as the Chair for the AALS Law and Religion Section and as a Member of the Executive Committee for the AALS Constitutional Law Section. She graduated summa cum laude from BYU Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif. She is completing a Ph.D. in Law at Oxford University as a Clarendon Scholar and a Tang Scholar.
Of Counsel, Spencer Fane LLP
Anthony J. “A.J.” Ferate has built a multi-faceted background in the areas of the law, policy, energy, campaigns and elections, and defense over the last 20 years.
Through recent representation as Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association (“OIPA”), A.J. held responsibilities over government efforts outside of the legislative branch on matters as broad as water, electric generation, commodity marketing, land matters, and seismicity. A.J. also maintained responsibility for legal matters at OIPA, including amicus briefing in appellate matters. A.J.’s extensive experience also includes management of public policy strategy for a Fortune 500 company.
For the past eleven years, A.J. has volunteered as General Counsel and spokesman for the Oklahoma Republican Party and has represented a number of elected officials, including U.S. Senator James Lankford, former statewide elected officials, a number of state legislators, and members of Congress.
Additionally, A.J. has assisted elected officials serve their constituents in all branches of government. Early in his career, A.J. held legislative aide duties in the Nebraska Legislature, then went on to work for former Nebraska Treasurer David Heineman. A.J. gained experience in the judiciary while serving Judge Gary L. Lumpkin at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal appellate court in Oklahoma. Following this service, A.J. began work with Denise A. Bode of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, assisting her in her duties regulating 70 percent of Oklahoma’s economy, including oil and gas and electric utilities.
A.J. honorably served ten years as an intelligence analyst for the United States Naval Reserve, including time at the Office of Naval Intelligence in the greater Washington DC area.
Opinion pieces authored or ghostwritten by A.J. have been published in the Seattle Times, Politico, Law360, The Oklahoman, Tulsa World and The Journal Record. A.J. has also been interviewed by national and international newspapers, and has also appeared on national radio programs including NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show and On Point with Tom Ashbrook.
United States District Judge, United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida
In November 2020, the Senate confirmed Kathryn Kimball Mizelle as a United States District Judge for the Middle District of Florida. At age 33, she became the youngest Article III judge in the country. Prior to her confirmation, Judge Mizelle was in private practice at Jones Day, where she focused on complex civil and criminal litigation and appeals. Judge Mizelle previously served at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Associate Attorney General, in the Southern Criminal Enforcement Section of the Tax Division, and in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Judge Mizelle has also taught as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
Judge Mizelle earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Covenant College, and her J.D., summa cum laude, from the University of Florida Levin College of Law. After graduation, Judge Mizelle served as a law clerk at every level of the federal judiciary: at the Supreme Court for Justice Clarence Thomas, at the D.C. Circuit for Judge Gregory G. Katsas, at the Eleventh Circuit for Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr., and at the Middle District of Florida for Judge James S. Moody Jr.
Tocqueville Associate Professor Department of Political Science and Concurrent Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion & Public Life in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding director of Notre Dame's undergraduate minor in Constitutional Studies and directs Notre Dame's Tocqueville Program for Inquiry into Religion and Public Life.
Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy with a focus on religious liberty and the American Founding. His first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (Cambridge University Press, 2009) won the Hubert Morken Award from the American Political Science Association for the best publication on religion and politics in 2009 and 2010. His First Amendment church-state case reader, Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents (Rowman & Littlefield) was first published in 2013 (revised edition, 2015) and is being used at Notre Dame and other leading universities.
Muñoz's current project is a scholarly monograph on the natural right of religious liberty and the original meaning of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses. Articles from that project have appeared in American Political Science Review, The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Notre Dame Law Review, American Political Thought, and the University of Pennsylvania's Journal of Constitutional Law.
General Counsel, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
James H. Percival graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Virginia School of Law. Before his work at the Department of Homeland Security, he was Chief of Staff to then Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody. James previously served in a number of other roles for Attorney General Moody and as Senior Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. Before beginning his public service, James worked for a global law firm and clerked for Judge Emmett Ripley Cox of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In between college and law school, James worked as a substitute teacher and as a missionary in South America.
Principal, Spero Law LLC
Christopher Mills is the founder of Spero Law LLC. He was previously a partner at a national law firm and a Constitutional Law Fellow at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He served as a law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court during October Term 2018. He also clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle, then-Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has authored briefs and motions in the Supreme Court, courts of appeals, and trial courts, and successfully argued before the D.C. Circuit. He has served as special counsel to South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, and is an Adjunct Professor at the Charleston School of Law.
A 2012 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, Christopher was a senior editor of the Harvard Law Review, an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and served on the Executive Board of the Harvard Federalist Society. In 2009, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude with a degree in economics from Furman University.
Christopher lives in Charleston, South Carolina with his wife, children, and golden retriever.
Principal, Spero Law LLC
Christopher Mills is the founder of Spero Law LLC. He was previously a partner at a national law firm and a Constitutional Law Fellow at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He served as a law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court during October Term 2018. He also clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle, then-Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has authored briefs and motions in the Supreme Court, courts of appeals, and trial courts, and successfully argued before the D.C. Circuit. He has served as special counsel to South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, and is an Adjunct Professor at the Charleston School of Law.
A 2012 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, Christopher was a senior editor of the Harvard Law Review, an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and served on the Executive Board of the Harvard Federalist Society. In 2009, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude with a degree in economics from Furman University.
Christopher lives in Charleston, South Carolina with his wife, children, and golden retriever.
United States District Judge, United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida
In November 2020, the Senate confirmed Kathryn Kimball Mizelle as a United States District Judge for the Middle District of Florida. At age 33, she became the youngest Article III judge in the country. Prior to her confirmation, Judge Mizelle was in private practice at Jones Day, where she focused on complex civil and criminal litigation and appeals. Judge Mizelle previously served at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Associate Attorney General, in the Southern Criminal Enforcement Section of the Tax Division, and in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Judge Mizelle has also taught as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
Judge Mizelle earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Covenant College, and her J.D., summa cum laude, from the University of Florida Levin College of Law. After graduation, Judge Mizelle served as a law clerk at every level of the federal judiciary: at the Supreme Court for Justice Clarence Thomas, at the D.C. Circuit for Judge Gregory G. Katsas, at the Eleventh Circuit for Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr., and at the Middle District of Florida for Judge James S. Moody Jr.
Tocqueville Associate Professor Department of Political Science and Concurrent Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion & Public Life in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding director of Notre Dame's undergraduate minor in Constitutional Studies and directs Notre Dame's Tocqueville Program for Inquiry into Religion and Public Life.
Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy with a focus on religious liberty and the American Founding. His first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (Cambridge University Press, 2009) won the Hubert Morken Award from the American Political Science Association for the best publication on religion and politics in 2009 and 2010. His First Amendment church-state case reader, Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents (Rowman & Littlefield) was first published in 2013 (revised edition, 2015) and is being used at Notre Dame and other leading universities.
Muñoz's current project is a scholarly monograph on the natural right of religious liberty and the original meaning of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses. Articles from that project have appeared in American Political Science Review, The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Notre Dame Law Review, American Political Thought, and the University of Pennsylvania's Journal of Constitutional Law.
General Counsel, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
James H. Percival graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Virginia School of Law. Before his work at the Department of Homeland Security, he was Chief of Staff to then Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody. James previously served in a number of other roles for Attorney General Moody and as Senior Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. Before beginning his public service, James worked for a global law firm and clerked for Judge Emmett Ripley Cox of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In between college and law school, James worked as a substitute teacher and as a missionary in South America.
Professor of Law and Faculty Director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, Georgetown University Law Center
Stephanie Barclay is a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School, and the Faculty Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Her research focuses on the role our different democratic institutions play in protecting minority rights, particularly at the intersection of free speech and religious exercise. Barclay‘s work is published or is forthcoming in leading journals such as the Harvard Law Review, the Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal Forum. One of her articles was also selected for the 2020 Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. Her work has been featured in many media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg BNA, The Hill, and Law 360. And her work has also been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Prior to joining Georgetown, Barclay was twice voted Professor of the Year. Barclay has also litigated constitutional cases at both the trial and appellate level, including before the U.S. Supreme Court. Barclay served as a law clerk to Judge N. Randy Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and to Justice Neil M. Gorsuch of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Barclay is a Faculty Affiliate at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School; and she is a Nootbaar Fellow at the Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics at Pepperdine University. She currently serves as the Chair for the AALS Law and Religion Section and as a Member of the Executive Committee for the AALS Constitutional Law Section. She graduated summa cum laude from BYU Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif. She is completing a Ph.D. in Law at Oxford University as a Clarendon Scholar and a Tang Scholar.
Of Counsel, Spencer Fane LLP
Anthony J. “A.J.” Ferate has built a multi-faceted background in the areas of the law, policy, energy, campaigns and elections, and defense over the last 20 years.
Through recent representation as Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association (“OIPA”), A.J. held responsibilities over government efforts outside of the legislative branch on matters as broad as water, electric generation, commodity marketing, land matters, and seismicity. A.J. also maintained responsibility for legal matters at OIPA, including amicus briefing in appellate matters. A.J.’s extensive experience also includes management of public policy strategy for a Fortune 500 company.
For the past eleven years, A.J. has volunteered as General Counsel and spokesman for the Oklahoma Republican Party and has represented a number of elected officials, including U.S. Senator James Lankford, former statewide elected officials, a number of state legislators, and members of Congress.
Additionally, A.J. has assisted elected officials serve their constituents in all branches of government. Early in his career, A.J. held legislative aide duties in the Nebraska Legislature, then went on to work for former Nebraska Treasurer David Heineman. A.J. gained experience in the judiciary while serving Judge Gary L. Lumpkin at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal appellate court in Oklahoma. Following this service, A.J. began work with Denise A. Bode of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, assisting her in her duties regulating 70 percent of Oklahoma’s economy, including oil and gas and electric utilities.
A.J. honorably served ten years as an intelligence analyst for the United States Naval Reserve, including time at the Office of Naval Intelligence in the greater Washington DC area.
Opinion pieces authored or ghostwritten by A.J. have been published in the Seattle Times, Politico, Law360, The Oklahoman, Tulsa World and The Journal Record. A.J. has also been interviewed by national and international newspapers, and has also appeared on national radio programs including NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show and On Point with Tom Ashbrook.
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence; Director, James Madison Program, Princeton University
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has several times been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President’s Council on Bioethics. He has also served as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. He was a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore, he holds the degrees of J.D. and M.T.S. from Harvard University and the degrees of D.Phil., B.C.L., D.C.L., and D.Litt. from Oxford University, in addition to twenty-one honorary doctorates. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Bradley Prize, the Irving Kristol Award of the American Enterprise Institute, and Princeton University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. His books include Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality and In Defense of Natural Law (both published by Oxford University Press), as well as The Clash of Orthodoxies and Conscience and Its Enemies (both published by ISI Books).
District Judge, United States District Court, Northern District of Texas
Matthew J. Kacsmaryk serves as United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas.
He previously served in the (1) private, (2) government, and (3) nonprofit sectors:
Judge Kacsmaryk is an Honors graduate of the University of Texas Law School, where he joined the Federalist Society and served as an Executive Editor of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. Judge Kacsmaryk co-founded the Fort Worth Lawyers Chapter in 2012, coordinated the 2018 Texas Chapters Conference hosted by the Fort Worth Lawyers Chapter, and presently serves on its Advisory Board.
John Paul Stevens Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
Andrew Koppelman is John Paul Stevens Professor of Law, Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science, and Philosophy Department Affiliated Faculty at Northwestern University. He received the Walder Award for Research Excellence from Northwestern, the Hart-Dworkin award in legal philosophy from the Association of American Law Schools, and the Edward S. Corwin Prize from the American Political Science Association. His scholarship focuses on issues at the intersection of law and political philosophy. He has written more than 100 scholarly articles and eight books, most recently Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed, (St. Martin’s Press). His column appears regularly at The Hill. You can find his recent work at andrewkoppelman.com.
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.
Assistant Clinical Professor of Law & Director, Religious Freedom Clinic, Harvard Law School
Josh is the Director of Harvard Law School’s Religious Freedom Clinic, a pro bono program that gives students a hands-on, supervised experience representing a diverse group of clients in First Amendment and religious freedom cases.
Before entering clinical teaching, Josh clerked for the Honorable Cormac J. Carney of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and the Honorable Jay S. Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In addition to serving as a staff attorney in the clinic’s inaugural semester in 2020, he was previously a trial litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson and an appellate litigator at Horvitz & Levy, where he specialized in representing individual and organizational clients in both commercial and civil rights cases, with particular expertise in First Amendment and religious freedom issues.
While in private practice, Josh received a Daily Journal 2022 California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year (CLAY) award, was twice named a “One to Watch” in appellate law by Best Lawyers, and argued in numerous appellate courts and courts of last resort, including twice before the California Supreme Court. His amicus brief for Jewish schools in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court was quoted by Justice Kavanaugh at oral argument.
Josh earned his B.A., magna cum laude, from Brigham Young University and graduated first in his class from UCLA School of Law.
Vice President and Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Eric Rassbach is Vice President and Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, where he has served since 2003. He has briefed over 90 cases at the United States Supreme Court and has led or been a part of Becket litigation teams in each of Becket’s pathbreaking victories there, including Hosanna-Tabor, Hobby Lobby, Holt v. Hobbs, Zubik v. Burwell, Agudath Israel of America v. Cuomo, and Fulton v. Philadelphia. In 2020, Eric argued Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru to the Supreme Court, garnering a 7-2 win for his Catholic school clients. Eric has also briefed and argued cases in federal appeals courts and state supreme courts across the nation. Eric has also represented clients in appeals to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France and in the highest courts of several other countries.
Eric believes passionately in the right of all people to the full measure of religious liberty and has represented members of almost every religious group present in the United States, including Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, Santeros, and Sikhs, as well as many governmental entities targeted for accommodating religion.
Eric frequently comments on church-state issues in the media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and other major press outlets. He has published legal scholarship in the Harvard Law Review Forum, the Tennessee Law Review, the Illinois Law Review, the Cato Supreme Court Review, and other legal journals, and often speaks to law school audiences.
Before joining Becket, Eric worked at Baker Botts LLP in Houston, where he worked in international project finance. He also served as a law clerk to United States District Court Judge Lee Rosenthal in Houston, Texas.
Eric graduated from Haverford College with a degree in Comparative Literature, is a member of Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School. Eric was a 2012-2013 Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School. He is Visiting Professor and Executive Director of The Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation Religious Liberty Clinic at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law in Malibu, where he leads students in litigating cases in American courts. He is also an Associated Scholar with the Centre for Religious Freedom at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. Eric is admitted in Texas, DC, California, and Ireland.
Principal, Spero Law LLC
Christopher Mills is the founder of Spero Law LLC. He was previously a partner at a national law firm and a Constitutional Law Fellow at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He served as a law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court during October Term 2018. He also clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle, then-Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has authored briefs and motions in the Supreme Court, courts of appeals, and trial courts, and successfully argued before the D.C. Circuit. He has served as special counsel to South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, and is an Adjunct Professor at the Charleston School of Law.
A 2012 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, Christopher was a senior editor of the Harvard Law Review, an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and served on the Executive Board of the Harvard Federalist Society. In 2009, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude with a degree in economics from Furman University.
Christopher lives in Charleston, South Carolina with his wife, children, and golden retriever.
United States District Judge, United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida
In November 2020, the Senate confirmed Kathryn Kimball Mizelle as a United States District Judge for the Middle District of Florida. At age 33, she became the youngest Article III judge in the country. Prior to her confirmation, Judge Mizelle was in private practice at Jones Day, where she focused on complex civil and criminal litigation and appeals. Judge Mizelle previously served at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Associate Attorney General, in the Southern Criminal Enforcement Section of the Tax Division, and in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Judge Mizelle has also taught as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
Judge Mizelle earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Covenant College, and her J.D., summa cum laude, from the University of Florida Levin College of Law. After graduation, Judge Mizelle served as a law clerk at every level of the federal judiciary: at the Supreme Court for Justice Clarence Thomas, at the D.C. Circuit for Judge Gregory G. Katsas, at the Eleventh Circuit for Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr., and at the Middle District of Florida for Judge James S. Moody Jr.
Tocqueville Associate Professor Department of Political Science and Concurrent Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion & Public Life in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding director of Notre Dame's undergraduate minor in Constitutional Studies and directs Notre Dame's Tocqueville Program for Inquiry into Religion and Public Life.
Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy with a focus on religious liberty and the American Founding. His first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (Cambridge University Press, 2009) won the Hubert Morken Award from the American Political Science Association for the best publication on religion and politics in 2009 and 2010. His First Amendment church-state case reader, Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents (Rowman & Littlefield) was first published in 2013 (revised edition, 2015) and is being used at Notre Dame and other leading universities.
Muñoz's current project is a scholarly monograph on the natural right of religious liberty and the original meaning of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses. Articles from that project have appeared in American Political Science Review, The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Notre Dame Law Review, American Political Thought, and the University of Pennsylvania's Journal of Constitutional Law.
General Counsel, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
James H. Percival graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Virginia School of Law. Before his work at the Department of Homeland Security, he was Chief of Staff to then Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody. James previously served in a number of other roles for Attorney General Moody and as Senior Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. Before beginning his public service, James worked for a global law firm and clerked for Judge Emmett Ripley Cox of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In between college and law school, James worked as a substitute teacher and as a missionary in South America.
From Employment Division v. Smith to Fulton v. City of Philadelphia: The Continuing Viability of the Free Exercise Clause
Chattanooga and Nashville Lawyers Chapter - Online Event
We Are Free for a Reason
David F. Forte
A review of Free to Believe: The Battle Over Religious Liberty in America, by Luke...
Litigation Update: Apache Stronghold v. United States
Stephanie Barclay, Anthony J. Ferate
Apache Stronghold v. United States is an ongoing case involving religious land use. On February...
Litigation Update: Apache Stronghold v. United States
TeleforumSession II: SCOTUS after the Barrett Confirmation
Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, Vincent Phillip Munoz, James Hamilton Percival, Christopher E. Mills, Eliot Bradford Peace
On January 30, 2021, The Federalist Society's Florida lawyers chapters hosted their annual Florida Chapters...
Session II: SCOTUS after the Barrett Confirmation
Christopher E. Mills, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, Vincent Phillip Munoz, Eliot Bradford Peace, James Hamilton Percival
On January 30, 2021, The Federalist Society's Florida lawyers chapters hosted their annual Florida Chapters...
Virtual Panel: Sex and Gender Issues Following Bostock
2021 Texas Chapters Conference
TXTopics
Does the Ministerial Exception Apply to Hostile Work Environment Claims?
There is no longer any doubt that the ministerial exception exists, and courts and litigants...
Covid and Religious Liberty: A Discussion with Eric Rassbach
Los Angeles Lawyers Chapter
Session II: SCOTUS after the Barrett Confirmation
2021 Annual Florida Chapters Conference
Lake Buena Vista, FL