Executive Vice President, Goldwater Institute
Christina Sandefur is the Executive Vice President at the Goldwater Institute. She develops policies and litigates cases advancing healthcare freedom, free enterprise, private property rights, free speech, and taxpayer rights.
Christina is a co-drafter of the Right to Try initiative, now federal law, which protects terminally ill patients' right to try safe investigational treatments that have been prescribed by their physician but are not yet FDA-approved. She has won important victories for property rights in Arizona and works nationally to promote the Institute's Private Property Rights Protection Act, a state-level reform that requires government to pay owners when regulations destroy property rights and reduce property values.
Christina is the co-author of the book Cornerstone of Liberty: Private Property Rights in 21st Century America (2016). She is a frequent guest on national television and radio programs, has provided expert legal testimony to various legislative committees, and is a frequent speaker at conferences. She is the recipient of the 2018 Buckley Award in recognition of her leadership in the freedom movement, and she is an Advisory Board Member of the Network of enlightened Women. Christina serves on the board of the Phoenix Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society and is a member of the executive committee for the Federalist Society's Regulatory Transparency Project: FDA & Health.
Christina is a graduate of Michigan State University College of Law and Hillsdale College.
Assistant Professor, Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science & Religion, University of Louisville
David Buckley is Associate Professor of Political Science, and Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science & Religion at the University of Louisville. David recently concluded a term as a Senior Advisor in the State Department’s Secretary’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (S/RGA), where he served as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow from August 2016-July 2017. David’s research focuses on religion and international affairs, and in particular the influence of religious actors on democratic politics. David’s book, Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal and the Philippines (Columbia University Press, 2017) was awarded the 2018 Religion and International Relations Book Award by the International Studies Association. His research and writing has appeared in leading journals of political science and media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. David holds a PhD in Government from Georgetown University, an M.A. in Comparative Ethnic Conflict from Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied as a George C. Mitchell Scholar, and a B.A. in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia.
Attorney-Adviser, Office of Legal Counsel, The Justice Department
Nathan A. Forrester currently works at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and previously served as Solicitor General of Alabama under then-Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. He clerked for Associate Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy from 1993-1994 and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1992-1993. He is a 1992 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Justin R. Walker is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump on May 4, 2020, and confirmed by the United States Senate on June 18, 2020. He is a former United States District Judge of the Western District of Kentucky.
Law Clerk, United States District Court for the District of Columbia
Matthew is a law clerk for the Honorable Royce C. Lamberth on the
United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Following his
clerkship, he will begin work as a litigation associate in the New York
office of Sullivan & Cromwell, focusing primarily on white collar crime
and internal investigations. He graduated from the University of
Texas School of Law in 2017.
University Professor of Law and Religion and Director of the Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
Michael P. Moreland was appointed University Professor of Law and Religion and Director of the Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy at Villanova University in 2017. Professor Moreland joined the Villanova faculty in 2006 and served as Vice Dean from 2012 to 2015. His research is primarily in the areas of torts, law and religion, constitutional law, and Catholic social thought, and he regularly teaches Torts, First Amendment, seminars in law and religion, and undergraduate courses in ethics.
Professor Moreland is the co-editor of Christianity and Private Law (Routledge, 2021), and his most recent publications include: “The Authority of Tradition: John Henry Newman and Legal Theory” in Christianity and the Making of Irish Law (Routledge, 2025); “Christianity and Torts” in The Oxford Handbook on Christianity and Law, (Oxford University Press, 2023); “Germaneness and Religious Liberty” in the Notre Dame Law Review (2023); “Contingency and Contestation in Christianity and Liberalism” in the Notre Dame Law Review (2023); “Friendship as the Primary Purpose of Law” in The American Journal of Jurisprudence 279 (2022); and “The Moral of Torts” (with Jeffrey Pojanowski) in Christianity and Private Law (Routledge, 2021).
Professor Moreland was a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame and the Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture from 2015 to 2017. He was the Forbes Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in the James Madison Program during academic year 2010-11. He has served as the project leader for grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation. He serves as the Chair of the Federalist Society’s Religious Liberties Practice Group Executive Committee and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California.
Professor Moreland received his BA in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, his MA and PhD in theological ethics from Boston College, and his JD from the University of Michigan Law School. Following law school, Professor Moreland clerked for the Honorable Paul J. Kelly Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and was an associate at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, DC, where he represented clients in First Amendment, professional liability, and products liability matters. Before coming to Villanova, he served as Associate Director for Domestic Policy at the White House under President George W. Bush, where he worked on a range of legal policy issues, including criminal justice, immigration, civil rights, and liability reform.
Assistant Professor, Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science & Religion, University of Louisville
David Buckley is Associate Professor of Political Science, and Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science & Religion at the University of Louisville. David recently concluded a term as a Senior Advisor in the State Department’s Secretary’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (S/RGA), where he served as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow from August 2016-July 2017. David’s research focuses on religion and international affairs, and in particular the influence of religious actors on democratic politics. David’s book, Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal and the Philippines (Columbia University Press, 2017) was awarded the 2018 Religion and International Relations Book Award by the International Studies Association. His research and writing has appeared in leading journals of political science and media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. David holds a PhD in Government from Georgetown University, an M.A. in Comparative Ethnic Conflict from Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied as a George C. Mitchell Scholar, and a B.A. in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia.
Attorney-Adviser, Office of Legal Counsel, The Justice Department
Nathan A. Forrester currently works at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and previously served as Solicitor General of Alabama under then-Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. He clerked for Associate Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy from 1993-1994 and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1992-1993. He is a 1992 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Justin R. Walker is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump on May 4, 2020, and confirmed by the United States Senate on June 18, 2020. He is a former United States District Judge of the Western District of Kentucky.
Vice President & Legal Director, National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation
Raymond J. LaJeunesse, Jr., is Vice President and Legal Director of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a non-profit legal aid organization. He was the first Staff Attorney employed by the Foundation and has more than forty-five years of experience helping workers in litigation in federal and state courts and administrative agencies over the abuses of compulsory unionism.
Mr. LaJeunesse has argued four cases in the United States Supreme Court. Those cases include Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Ass’n, 500 U.S. 507 (1991), which limited the purposes for which compulsory union fees collected from public employees may lawfully be spent; Air Line Pilots Ass’n v. Miller, 523 U.S. 866 (1998), which established that unions cannot compel nonmembers to exhaust union-established remedies before going to court to challenge compulsory union fees; and Marquez v. Screen Actors Guild, 525 U.S. 33 (1998), in which the Court recognized that unions must notify employees that they can satisfy the “membership” requirement of “union shop” agreements by just paying fees for union bargaining activities and need not join and pay full dues to keep their jobs. He also was lead attorney in Hohe v. Casey, 956 F.2d 399 (3d Cir. 1992), in which more than $8.3 million in compulsory agency fees was recovered from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees for a class of 57,000 nonmembers.
Mr. LaJeunesse is the author of several published articles about labor law, has testified before Congressional committees several times, and was an Advisor on the Transition Team for Labor- Related Agencies, Office of the President-Elect, in 1980-81 and a legislative aide to a member of the Virginia state legislature. He is a Vice Chairman of the Federalist Society’s Labor and Employment Law Practice Group and has spoken or debated at the Society’s National Lawyers Convention and at many Lawyers and Student Chapters on such topics as Right to Work laws, compulsory unionism arrangements, the misuse of union dues for politics, union organizing tactics (“card check” vs. secret-ballot elections), and the future of the union movement.
Topics
Liberty Month Revisited: The Freedom to Speak and Participate in Elections
This month we are sharing a selection of paired pieces from The Federalist Society's Liberty...
Free Speech & Off-Label Branding [POLICYbrief]
Christina Sandefur
While the prescription of medicine for off-label use is legal, the FDA prohibits pharmaceutical companies...
Topics
Chevron Deference v. The United States Constitution
Two decades of controversy over Federal Communications Commission (FCC) attempts to regulate the Internet across...
The Establishment Clause Overseas
David T. Buckley, Nathan A. Forrester, Justin Reed Walker
How much, if at all, does the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause constrain what the United...
Topics
Is Telling a “Lawyer Joke” Professional Misconduct? Pennsylvania Considers a Version of ABA Model Rule 8.4(g)
Tomorrow the Disciplinary Board of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court meets to consider the adoption of...
The Establishment Clause Overseas
Religious Liberties Practice Group Teleforum
TeleforumCourthouse Steps Decisions: Lozman v. Riviera Beach/Chavez-Meza v. U.S.
Matthew Wilkins
On Tuesday, June 19th, 2018, the Supreme Court handed down two decisions in Lozman v....
Courthouse Steps: NIFLA v. Becerra Decided
Michael P. Moreland
NIFLA is a religiously-affiliated pro-life pregnancy clinic that sought to enjoin the California Reproductive Freedom,...
Courthouse Steps: Janus v. AFSCME Decided
Labor & Employment Law Practice Group Teleforum
TeleforumTopics
The President's Immigration Travel Ban: What Trump v. Hawaii Has to Say About Stating a Claim Under the Establishment Clause
It is little appreciated that the United States Supreme Court’s decision today in Trump v. Hawaii,...