President, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty; Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Religious Liberty, Catholic University; Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School
Mark joined the Becket team in 2011 and splits his time as Associate Professor at The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, and as Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. Mark teaches constitutional law, religious liberty, torts, and evidence. He has been voted Teacher of the Year three years in a row by the Law School’s Student Bar Association.
Mark has broad experience litigating First Amendment religious exercise and free speech cases. He has represented the winning parties in a variety of Supreme Court First Amendment cases including Hobby Lobby, Little Sisters, Wheaton College, and Holt. In January 2014, Mark argued before the Supreme Court in McCullen v. Coakley, a First Amendment challenge to a Massachusetts speech restriction outside of abortion clinics. The Justices ruled in favor of his clients 9-0. Mark also led a successful eight-year litigation battle against Governor Blagojevich’s effort to force religious pharmacists to distribute the morning-after and week-after pills.
Mark’s academic writing focuses on the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and has appeared in a variety of prestigious journals, including the Harvard Law Review.
Mark is a widely sought after speaker on constitutional issues, particularly concerning abortion and the First Amendment. Professor Rienzi has been invited to discuss these issues at Harvard Law School, Columbia University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Notre Dame Law School, the National Press Club, and the Capitol. He has been quoted on constitutional law issues on NPR, in the Washington Times, The New York Daily News, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Mark has also been featured on the Kelly File, Fox News Sunday, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Geraldo at Large, CNN Tonight, CNN Live, Andrea Mitchell Reports, and Wall Street Journal Live.
Prior to joining Becket, Mark served as counsel for the litigation department and the intellectual property litigation practice group of WilmerHale LLP. His practice focused on complex civil and appellate litigation with a particular emphasis on intellectual property and First Amendment issues. Prior to joining WilmerHale, he served as law clerk to the Hon. Stephen F. Williams, senior circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Prior to that, Mark was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and B.A. from Princeton University, both with honors.
Professor of Law, LMU Loyola Law School (Los Angeles)
After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, Aaron Caplan clerked for the Honorable Betty Binns Fletcher, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 1992 to 1998, he worked in the Seattle office of Perkins Coie, where his practice included intellectual property matters and other types of commercial litigation. He also maintained an active pro bono practice that included capital habeas corpus, asylum, death with dignity, and freedom of speech.
In 1998, Caplan became the first full-time staff attorney in more than 20 years for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, where his practice included freedom of speech, freedom of religion, gay rights, prisoner's rights, access to government documents and much more. At the ACLU, his litigation included some of the nation’s first decisions on the free speech rights of public school students on the Internet, the first challenge to the federal No Fly List, and the first decision to order the reinstatement of a gay officer discharged under the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell statute. Professor Caplan joined the Loyola Law School faculty in 2008.
Professor of Law, Catholic University of America
Robert Destro served as Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). He has a long history as a human rights advocate and civil rights attorney with expertise in elections, employment, and constitutional law. Destro has served on the faculty at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law since 1982 and served as its interim dean from 1999 to 2001. He was founding director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion and served as the Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies from June 2017 to September 2019. He served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983-1989. His legal work includes collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in a fifteen-year dialogue among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders in the legal, business, and religious fields in the United States and the Middle East as well as efforts promoting the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Middle East. He has served as voting rights counsel for the Ohio Secretary of State and has advocated for the first amendment rights of individuals and organizations.
He earned a B.A. from Miami University, Ohio, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an active member of the Bar in Ohio and California.
The rest of his bio including his publications are available on the Catholic University Faculty page linked here.
Partner, Graves Garrett LLC
Todd Graves is a lawyer in private practice with the law firm of Graves Garrett. Todd represents individuals and businesses nationwide before federal and state courts and administrative agencies. His areas of expertise include white collar criminal defense, political speech and election law, internal investigations, regulatory compliance, and complex commercial litigation. Todd is admitted to the United States Supreme Court, the Missouri Bar, the Kansas Bar, the Texas Bar, the Iowa Bar, the Federal Courts of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the Eighth Circuit and the Sixth Circuit, and the Federal District Courts for the Western District of Missouri, Eastern District of Missouri, the District of Kansas, and the Western District of Michigan.
Todd currently serves as Executive Vice-President of the Pony Express Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Royal Association and a founding board member of the Kansas City Missouri Police Foundation.
Before forming Graves Garrett, Todd served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. As United States Attorney, Todd was responsible for prosecuting federal crimes including mail and wire fraud, money laundering, public corruption, health care fraud, child pornography, firearms violations, narcotics trafficking, pharmaceutical diversion, corporate fraud, and terrorism financing. During Graves’ tenure, felony filings doubled.
In addition, Todd was responsible for defending civil lawsuits brought against the United States, handling federal forfeiture actions, and collecting debts and restitution. Todd managed a staff of 120 with headquarters in Kansas City and two branch offices.
Todd also served as a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, advising the Attorney General on Department of Justice national priorities and policies. Todd participated in drafting Department of Justice policies in corporate investigations including charging, pre-trial diversion, and sentencing. Todd was also a member of the national Executive Working Group, which includes six Department of Justice officials, six state attorneys general, and six district attorneys.
Todd was appointed United States Attorney from his position as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, an office to which he was elected in 1994 and 1998. At the time of his election in 1994, he was the youngest full-time prosecuting attorney in Missouri. In that position, he oversaw a yearly caseload of approximately 400 felonies, 2500 misdemeanors and 14,000 traffic offenses.
As Prosecuting Attorney and as United States Attorney, Todd actively managed cases and trials under his authority and personally tried numerous jury trials to verdict, including cases of child molestation, drug distribution, murder and capital murder.
Prior to his service as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, Todd was in private practice with the Bryan Cave law firm. Before joining Bryan Cave, he was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Missouri.
In 1991, Todd received his law degree and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Virginia. He received a bachelor’s degree, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Missouri in 1988.
Raised on a family farm near Tarkio, Missouri, Todd has been married 24 years to his wife, Tracy. The couple has four children, and they reside on a 270 acre farm north of Kansas City that has been in the family since 1867.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
David Stras became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Before serving on the Eighth Circuit, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he occupied from July 1, 2010 until his appointment to the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to becoming a judge, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics.
Judge Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Professor of Law, Catholic University of America
Robert Destro served as Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). He has a long history as a human rights advocate and civil rights attorney with expertise in elections, employment, and constitutional law. Destro has served on the faculty at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law since 1982 and served as its interim dean from 1999 to 2001. He was founding director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion and served as the Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies from June 2017 to September 2019. He served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983-1989. His legal work includes collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in a fifteen-year dialogue among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders in the legal, business, and religious fields in the United States and the Middle East as well as efforts promoting the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Middle East. He has served as voting rights counsel for the Ohio Secretary of State and has advocated for the first amendment rights of individuals and organizations.
He earned a B.A. from Miami University, Ohio, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an active member of the Bar in Ohio and California.
The rest of his bio including his publications are available on the Catholic University Faculty page linked here.
Professor of Law, Catholic University of America
Robert Destro served as Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). He has a long history as a human rights advocate and civil rights attorney with expertise in elections, employment, and constitutional law. Destro has served on the faculty at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law since 1982 and served as its interim dean from 1999 to 2001. He was founding director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion and served as the Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies from June 2017 to September 2019. He served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983-1989. His legal work includes collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in a fifteen-year dialogue among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders in the legal, business, and religious fields in the United States and the Middle East as well as efforts promoting the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Middle East. He has served as voting rights counsel for the Ohio Secretary of State and has advocated for the first amendment rights of individuals and organizations.
He earned a B.A. from Miami University, Ohio, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an active member of the Bar in Ohio and California.
The rest of his bio including his publications are available on the Catholic University Faculty page linked here.
President, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty; Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Religious Liberty, Catholic University; Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School
Mark joined the Becket team in 2011 and splits his time as Associate Professor at The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, and as Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. Mark teaches constitutional law, religious liberty, torts, and evidence. He has been voted Teacher of the Year three years in a row by the Law School’s Student Bar Association.
Mark has broad experience litigating First Amendment religious exercise and free speech cases. He has represented the winning parties in a variety of Supreme Court First Amendment cases including Hobby Lobby, Little Sisters, Wheaton College, and Holt. In January 2014, Mark argued before the Supreme Court in McCullen v. Coakley, a First Amendment challenge to a Massachusetts speech restriction outside of abortion clinics. The Justices ruled in favor of his clients 9-0. Mark also led a successful eight-year litigation battle against Governor Blagojevich’s effort to force religious pharmacists to distribute the morning-after and week-after pills.
Mark’s academic writing focuses on the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and has appeared in a variety of prestigious journals, including the Harvard Law Review.
Mark is a widely sought after speaker on constitutional issues, particularly concerning abortion and the First Amendment. Professor Rienzi has been invited to discuss these issues at Harvard Law School, Columbia University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Notre Dame Law School, the National Press Club, and the Capitol. He has been quoted on constitutional law issues on NPR, in the Washington Times, The New York Daily News, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Mark has also been featured on the Kelly File, Fox News Sunday, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Geraldo at Large, CNN Tonight, CNN Live, Andrea Mitchell Reports, and Wall Street Journal Live.
Prior to joining Becket, Mark served as counsel for the litigation department and the intellectual property litigation practice group of WilmerHale LLP. His practice focused on complex civil and appellate litigation with a particular emphasis on intellectual property and First Amendment issues. Prior to joining WilmerHale, he served as law clerk to the Hon. Stephen F. Williams, senior circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Prior to that, Mark was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and B.A. from Princeton University, both with honors.
Professor of Law, LMU Loyola Law School (Los Angeles)
After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, Aaron Caplan clerked for the Honorable Betty Binns Fletcher, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 1992 to 1998, he worked in the Seattle office of Perkins Coie, where his practice included intellectual property matters and other types of commercial litigation. He also maintained an active pro bono practice that included capital habeas corpus, asylum, death with dignity, and freedom of speech.
In 1998, Caplan became the first full-time staff attorney in more than 20 years for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, where his practice included freedom of speech, freedom of religion, gay rights, prisoner's rights, access to government documents and much more. At the ACLU, his litigation included some of the nation’s first decisions on the free speech rights of public school students on the Internet, the first challenge to the federal No Fly List, and the first decision to order the reinstatement of a gay officer discharged under the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell statute. Professor Caplan joined the Loyola Law School faculty in 2008.
Professor of Law, Catholic University of America
Robert Destro served as Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). He has a long history as a human rights advocate and civil rights attorney with expertise in elections, employment, and constitutional law. Destro has served on the faculty at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law since 1982 and served as its interim dean from 1999 to 2001. He was founding director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion and served as the Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies from June 2017 to September 2019. He served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983-1989. His legal work includes collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in a fifteen-year dialogue among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders in the legal, business, and religious fields in the United States and the Middle East as well as efforts promoting the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Middle East. He has served as voting rights counsel for the Ohio Secretary of State and has advocated for the first amendment rights of individuals and organizations.
He earned a B.A. from Miami University, Ohio, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an active member of the Bar in Ohio and California.
The rest of his bio including his publications are available on the Catholic University Faculty page linked here.
Partner, Graves Garrett LLC
Todd Graves is a lawyer in private practice with the law firm of Graves Garrett. Todd represents individuals and businesses nationwide before federal and state courts and administrative agencies. His areas of expertise include white collar criminal defense, political speech and election law, internal investigations, regulatory compliance, and complex commercial litigation. Todd is admitted to the United States Supreme Court, the Missouri Bar, the Kansas Bar, the Texas Bar, the Iowa Bar, the Federal Courts of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the Eighth Circuit and the Sixth Circuit, and the Federal District Courts for the Western District of Missouri, Eastern District of Missouri, the District of Kansas, and the Western District of Michigan.
Todd currently serves as Executive Vice-President of the Pony Express Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Royal Association and a founding board member of the Kansas City Missouri Police Foundation.
Before forming Graves Garrett, Todd served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. As United States Attorney, Todd was responsible for prosecuting federal crimes including mail and wire fraud, money laundering, public corruption, health care fraud, child pornography, firearms violations, narcotics trafficking, pharmaceutical diversion, corporate fraud, and terrorism financing. During Graves’ tenure, felony filings doubled.
In addition, Todd was responsible for defending civil lawsuits brought against the United States, handling federal forfeiture actions, and collecting debts and restitution. Todd managed a staff of 120 with headquarters in Kansas City and two branch offices.
Todd also served as a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, advising the Attorney General on Department of Justice national priorities and policies. Todd participated in drafting Department of Justice policies in corporate investigations including charging, pre-trial diversion, and sentencing. Todd was also a member of the national Executive Working Group, which includes six Department of Justice officials, six state attorneys general, and six district attorneys.
Todd was appointed United States Attorney from his position as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, an office to which he was elected in 1994 and 1998. At the time of his election in 1994, he was the youngest full-time prosecuting attorney in Missouri. In that position, he oversaw a yearly caseload of approximately 400 felonies, 2500 misdemeanors and 14,000 traffic offenses.
As Prosecuting Attorney and as United States Attorney, Todd actively managed cases and trials under his authority and personally tried numerous jury trials to verdict, including cases of child molestation, drug distribution, murder and capital murder.
Prior to his service as Platte County Prosecuting Attorney, Todd was in private practice with the Bryan Cave law firm. Before joining Bryan Cave, he was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Missouri.
In 1991, Todd received his law degree and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Virginia. He received a bachelor’s degree, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Missouri in 1988.
Raised on a family farm near Tarkio, Missouri, Todd has been married 24 years to his wife, Tracy. The couple has four children, and they reside on a 270 acre farm north of Kansas City that has been in the family since 1867.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
David Stras became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on January 31, 2018. Before serving on the Eighth Circuit, Judge Stras was an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he occupied from July 1, 2010 until his appointment to the Eighth Circuit.
Prior to becoming a judge, Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics.
Judge Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999, both from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Professor of Law, Catholic University of America
Robert Destro served as Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). He has a long history as a human rights advocate and civil rights attorney with expertise in elections, employment, and constitutional law. Destro has served on the faculty at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law since 1982 and served as its interim dean from 1999 to 2001. He was founding director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion and served as the Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies from June 2017 to September 2019. He served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983-1989. His legal work includes collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in a fifteen-year dialogue among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders in the legal, business, and religious fields in the United States and the Middle East as well as efforts promoting the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Middle East. He has served as voting rights counsel for the Ohio Secretary of State and has advocated for the first amendment rights of individuals and organizations.
He earned a B.A. from Miami University, Ohio, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an active member of the Bar in Ohio and California.
The rest of his bio including his publications are available on the Catholic University Faculty page linked here.
Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law & Religion and, Washington University School of Law
Professor John Inazu's scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory. His first book, Liberty's Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale University Press, 2012), seeks to recover the role of assembly in American political and constitutional thought. His second book isConfident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Professor Inazu is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He is the special editor of a volume on law and theology published in Law and Contemporary Problems, and his articles have appeared in a number of law reviews and specialty journals. He has written broadly for mainstream audiences in publications including USA Today, CNN, the Hedgehog Review, and the Washington Post.
Professor Inazu was the law school's 2014 David M. Becker Professor of the Year. Prior to joining the law faculty, he was a visiting assistant professor at Duke University School of Law and a Royster Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He clerked for Judge Roger L. Wollman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and served for four years as an associate general counsel with the Department of the Air Force at the Pentagon.
F. Elwood and Eleanor Davis Professor Emeritus of Law, The George Washington University Law School
Professor Lupu joined the law school in 1990. After graduating from law school, where he was case editor of the Harvard Law Review, he practiced law with the Boston firm of Hill & Barlow and then joined the law faculty at Boston University, where he taught from 1973 to 1989. During that time, he also served as a visiting professor at Northeastern University and at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1989–90, he was the professor-in-residence on the Appellate Staff of the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Professor Lupu is a nationally recognized scholar in constitutional law, with an emphasis in his writings on the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Together with his colleague Professor Robert Tuttle, Professor Lupu is the co-author of Secular Government, Religious People (Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2014) and many law journal articles.
Warren Distinguished Professor of Law; Co-Executive Director, Institute for Law & Religion; Co-Executive Director, Institute for Law & Philosophy, University of San Diego School of Law
Steven D. Smith, J.D. Yale 1979, B.A. BYU 1976, is a Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego, and Co-Director of that university's Institute for Law and Religion. Before moving to San Diego, he was the Robert and Marion Short Professor at Notre Dame Law School and the Byron R. White Professor of Law at the University of Colorado.
Professor Smith's first book, Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom (Oxford 1995), critically examines both the standard historical and normative accounts of religious freedom. This examination is continued in his most recent book, The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom (Harvard 2014), which offers a "revised account" in contrast to the standard story of religious freedom in this country. Recently described as a kind of "conservative Crit," Professor Smith has offered critical analyses of more general philosophical and jurisprudential themes in Law's Quandary (Harvard 2004) and The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (Harvard 2010).
Shareholder, Farney Daniels, PC
Jonathan B. Baker is Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, where he teaches courses primarily in the areas of antitrust and economic regulation. He served as the Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission from 2009 to 2011, and as the Director of the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission from 1995 to 1998. Previously, he worked as a Senior Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, an Attorney Advisor to the Acting Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, and an antitrust lawyer in private practice. Professor Baker is the co-author of an antitrust casebook, a past Editorial Chair of Antitrust Law Journal, and a past member of the Council of the American Bar Association’s Section of Antitrust Law. He has published widely in the fields of antitrust law and policy and industrial organization economics. In 2004 he received American University’s Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research, and Other Professional Accomplishments, and in 1998 he received the Federal Trade Commission’s Award for Distinguished Service. He has a J.D. from Harvard and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.
Professor of Law, Catholic University of America
Robert Destro served as Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL). He has a long history as a human rights advocate and civil rights attorney with expertise in elections, employment, and constitutional law. Destro has served on the faculty at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law since 1982 and served as its interim dean from 1999 to 2001. He was founding director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion and served as the Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies from June 2017 to September 2019. He served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983-1989. His legal work includes collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in a fifteen-year dialogue among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders in the legal, business, and religious fields in the United States and the Middle East as well as efforts promoting the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Middle East. He has served as voting rights counsel for the Ohio Secretary of State and has advocated for the first amendment rights of individuals and organizations.
He earned a B.A. from Miami University, Ohio, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an active member of the Bar in Ohio and California.
The rest of his bio including his publications are available on the Catholic University Faculty page linked here.
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