Fox Family Pavilion Distinguished Scholar in Residence, University of Pennsylvania
MARCI A. HAMILTON is a Fox Family Pavilion Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the founder, CEO, and Academic Director of CHILD USA, www.childusa.org, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit academic think tank at the University of Pennsylvania dedicated to interdisciplinary, evidence-based research to prevent child abuse and neglect. Before joining the program on religion at Penn, Professor Hamilton was the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University.
Hamilton is the leading public intellectual critic of extreme religious liberty and its impact on vulnerable populations including children, LGBTQ, and women. The author of God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty (Cambridge University Press), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, she is also a columnist for Verdict on Justia.com. Hamilton successfully challenged the constitutionality of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) at the Supreme Court in Boerne v. Flores (1997), and defeated the RFRA claim brought by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee against hundreds of child sex abuse survivors in Committee of Unsecured Creditors v. Listecki (7th Cir. 2015).
Drawing on her experience studying and advising in cases involving clergy sex abuse, Hamilton is the leading expert on child sex abuse statutes of limitations and has submitted testimony and advised legislators in every state where significant reform has occurred. She is the author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children (Cambridge University Press), which advocates for the elimination of child sex abuse statutes of limitations. She has also filed countless pro bono amicus briefs for the protection of children at the United States Supreme Court and the state supreme courts. Her textbook, Children and the Law, co-authored with Martin Gardner, will be published Fall 2017 by Carolina Academic Press, formerly Lexis/Nexis.
Hamilton clerked for United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Judge Edward R. Becker of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Hamilton has been honored with the 2016 Voice Today, Voice of Gratitude Award; the 2015 Religious Liberty Award, American Humanist Association; the 2014 Freethought Heroine Award; the National Crime Victim Bar Association’s Frank Carrington Champion of Civil Justice Award, 2012; the E. Nathaniel Gates Award for outstanding public advocacy and scholarship, 2008; and selected as a Pennsylvania Woman of the Year Award, 2012, among others. She is also frequently quoted in the national media on RFRA, RLUIPA, First Amendment, clergy sex abuse, and statute of limitations issues.
Professor Hamilton is a graduate of Vanderbilt University, B.A., summa cum laude; Pennsylvania State University, M.A. (English, fiction writing, High Honors); M.A. (Philosophy); and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, J.D., magna cum laude, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Order of the Coif.
Chairman and President, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Kevin J. "Seamus" Hasson is Founder and President of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a bipartisan, public-interest law firm that protects the free expression of all religious traditions. Since 1994, Hasson and the Becket Fund have successfully represented clients from nearly every faith tradition including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Native Americans, Unitarians and Zoroastrians. Along the way, The Becket Fund has won kudos from thinkers from Pope John Paul II to Elie Wiesel.
Hasson enjoys broad credibility in the national media. He has been widely quoted, appearing for example, in Newsweek, US News and World Report, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor and USA Today, as well as in regional media from The L.A. Times to The Chicago Tribune to The Philadelphia Enquirer. He has appeared on broadcast news programs including The Today Show, Dateline NBC, McLaughlin One on One, NPR's Talk of the Nation, and CNN Talkback Live. He's also appeared twice on Al-Jazeera, debating Saudi clerics.
Hasson lectures and debates frequently, in venues ranging from Oxford to the Vatican, from Harvard to BYU. He is the author of The Right to be Wrong: Ending the Culture War over Religion in America.
Before founding the Becket Fund in 1994, Hasson was an attorney at Williams & Connolly in Washington D.C., where he focused on religious liberty litigation. From 1986 to 1987, he served in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department where he advised the White House and cabinet departments on church-state relations. He is a 1985 magna cum laude graduate of Notre Dame Law School and also holds a Master's degree in theology from Notre Dame.
Senior Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Loretta A. Preska is a senior judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She joined the court in 1992 after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush. Preska became the chief judge of the court in May of 2009 when Kimba Wood assumed senior status. She served as chief judge of the court for a seven-year term from 2009 to 2016, and took senior status in 2017.
Preska graduated from the College of St. Rose with her Bachelor's degree in 1970 and also graduated from Fordham Law with her Juris Doctor Degree in 1973. She graduated from NYU Law with her Master of Laws degree in 1978.
Chairman, Department of Economics, George Mason University
Professor of Law and Economics, Fordham University School of Law
Professor of Corporate & Antitrust Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor Johnson is currently a Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, and teaches in the areas of Contracts, Environmental Law, and Gun Control/Gun Rights. He was previously Professor of Legal Studies in Business at Franklin and Marshall College (1988-93), Of Counsel at Kirkpatrick and Lockhard (1990-93), Vice President and Co-owner Westar Environmental Corporation (1988-90), and an Associate at Morgan, Lewis and Bockius (1985-88).
Andrew P. Morriss is Dean and Anthony G. Buzbee Dean's Endowed Chairholder at Texas A&M School of Law and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Center on Culture and Civil Society at the Independent Institute. He is also a Research Fellow at the Center for Labor and Employment Law at New York University; Senior Fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center; Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; and a regular Visiting Professor at Universidad Francisco Marroquín, in Guatemala. Prior to coming to the University of Illinois, he served as Galen J. Roush Professor of Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Reserve University.
He received his A.B. degree from Princeton University, his J.D. and a masters degree in public affairs from the University of Texas at Austin, and his Ph.D. (economics) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After law school he clerked for U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders in the Northern District of Texas and worked for two years at Texas Rural Legal Aid in Hereford and Plainview, Texas.
Professor Morriss is the author or coauthor of more than forty book chapters and scholarly articles, and he is the co-editor of Cross-Border Human Resources, Labor and Employment Issues: Proceedings of the New York University 54th Annual Conference on Labor (with Samuel Estreicher); Property Stories (with Gerald Korngold); and The Common Law and the Environment (with Roger Meiners). He is the author of the book, Regulation by Litigation (with Bruce Yandle and Andrew Dorchak), and he also regularly writes for The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty and Books & Culture: A Christian Review.
Professor Morriss was recently named one of the Reporters for the Restatement of Employment Law by the American Law Institute (ALI), Senior Fellow for the Institute for Energy Research, and a Reporter for the Restatement of Employment Law by the American Law Institute.
Vice President for Litigation, Institute for Free Speech
Alan joined the Institute for Free Speech as Vice President for Litigation in February 2021. In this role, Alan directs the Institute’s litigation and legal advocacy, leads our in-house legal team, and manages and works to expand our network of volunteer attorneys.
Prior to joining the Institute, Alan litigated complex federal matters for twenty years, in his own practice and as a partner in various Washington-area firms. He argued and won landmark constitutional cases in the United States Supreme Court and has appeared before numerous appellate and district courts throughout the country. Alan often speaks at law schools and continuing legal education seminars. He also teaches strategic/public interest litigation as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Alan began his career clerking for the Hon. Terrence W. Boyle, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. He has also served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, a litigation associate at the Washington office of Sidley Austin, and as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.
Alan earned his J.D. at Georgetown (1995) and his B.A. at Cornell University (1992). He is an active member in good standing of the Virginia, District of Columbia, and California bars, the Bar of the United States Supreme Court, and various federal appellate and district court bars.
Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor Johnson is currently a Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, and teaches in the areas of Contracts, Environmental Law, and Gun Control/Gun Rights. He was previously Professor of Legal Studies in Business at Franklin and Marshall College (1988-93), Of Counsel at Kirkpatrick and Lockhard (1990-93), Vice President and Co-owner Westar Environmental Corporation (1988-90), and an Associate at Morgan, Lewis and Bockius (1985-88).
Executive Vice President and Dean of the Law Center; Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair; Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
William M. Treanor is the Executive Vice President of Georgetown University, Dean of the Law Center, and Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair. Treanor joined Georgetown in 2010 and was reappointed to serve a third term as Dean and Executive Vice President on July 1, 2020.
Under Treanor’s leadership, Georgetown Law has hired 75 new faculty members; tripled the number of experiential offerings for students in its clinical, externship, and practicum programs; transformed its law and technology offerings into a world class program with 19 full-time faculty experts and over 80 courses in this area; and experienced its most successful era of fundraising, culminating in nearly $67 million in giving in the last fiscal year.
Treanor has also advanced Georgetown Law’s commitment to affordability and access. During his tenure, Georgetown has more than doubled financial aid; raised nearly $25 million dollars for the Law Center’s scholarship program for exceptional students with significant financial need; and launched the RISE program, which provides academic support for students from historically underrepresented groups. The Law Center also created the Early Outreach Initiative, which brings the Law Center’s dean of admissions, current law students, and alumni together to encourage students in underserved high schools to consider pursuing careers as lawyers.
In keeping with Georgetown Law’s motto, “Law is but the means; justice is the end,” Treanor has focused on increasing opportunities for students to pursue careers in public interest law. He is proud that nearly 1 in 4 graduates move straight into public service jobs – a ratio higher than any other top law school in America. The Law Center supports post-graduate fellowships that have enabled more than 400 graduates to work in public interest jobs, and, in combination with the law firms ArentFox Schiff and DLA Piper, it has launched the D.C. Affordable Law Firm, a “low bono” law firm where recent Georgetown Law graduates provide legal representation to people of limited means.
The National Jurist magazine has named Treanor one of the most influential people in legal education five times. He is a member of the Morristown (N.J.) High School Hall of Fame. In 2020, he was elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for law and education. Most recently, he was selected for the inaugural Honorable Robert A. Katzmann Award for Academic Excellence by the Burton Awards.
Treanor’s areas of academic expertise include constitutional law, property law, criminal law, intellectual property, and legal history. At Georgetown Law, he has taught a first-year legal justice seminar, an upper-level course on the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, and leadership courses. His writings have principally been in the area of constitutional history, and he has been recognized as one of the 10 most-cited legal history scholars in the United States by the University of Chicago Law School’s Brian Leiter. His early work largely focused on the history of constitutional protections of private property. His article “The Original Understanding of the Takings Clause and the Political Process,” 95 Colum. L. Rev. 782 (1995), was recognized by the Land Use Professors Blog as the most cited land use article of the past 30 years. Treanor’s article, “Judicial Review before Marbury” was cited in the Moore v. Harper (2023) majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts. His recent article, “The Case of the Dishonest Scrivener: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of the Federalist Constitution,” examined the changes that Gouverneur Morris and the Committee of Style made in preparing the Constitution’s final draft. W.W. Norton will publish his upcoming book, Fathers of the Constitution: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Creation of the American Republic.
Before coming to Georgetown, Treanor was Dean and Paul Fuller Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He also served in a variety of positions in the government, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice; Associate Counsel, Office of Independent Counsel during the Iran/Contra investigation. He was law clerk to the Honorable James L. Oakes, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Treanor has a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale College.
Vice President for Litigation, Institute for Free Speech
Alan joined the Institute for Free Speech as Vice President for Litigation in February 2021. In this role, Alan directs the Institute’s litigation and legal advocacy, leads our in-house legal team, and manages and works to expand our network of volunteer attorneys.
Prior to joining the Institute, Alan litigated complex federal matters for twenty years, in his own practice and as a partner in various Washington-area firms. He argued and won landmark constitutional cases in the United States Supreme Court and has appeared before numerous appellate and district courts throughout the country. Alan often speaks at law schools and continuing legal education seminars. He also teaches strategic/public interest litigation as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Alan began his career clerking for the Hon. Terrence W. Boyle, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. He has also served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, a litigation associate at the Washington office of Sidley Austin, and as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.
Alan earned his J.D. at Georgetown (1995) and his B.A. at Cornell University (1992). He is an active member in good standing of the Virginia, District of Columbia, and California bars, the Bar of the United States Supreme Court, and various federal appellate and district court bars.
Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor Johnson is currently a Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, and teaches in the areas of Contracts, Environmental Law, and Gun Control/Gun Rights. He was previously Professor of Legal Studies in Business at Franklin and Marshall College (1988-93), Of Counsel at Kirkpatrick and Lockhard (1990-93), Vice President and Co-owner Westar Environmental Corporation (1988-90), and an Associate at Morgan, Lewis and Bockius (1985-88).
Executive Vice President and Dean of the Law Center; Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair; Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
William M. Treanor is the Executive Vice President of Georgetown University, Dean of the Law Center, and Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair. Treanor joined Georgetown in 2010 and was reappointed to serve a third term as Dean and Executive Vice President on July 1, 2020.
Under Treanor’s leadership, Georgetown Law has hired 75 new faculty members; tripled the number of experiential offerings for students in its clinical, externship, and practicum programs; transformed its law and technology offerings into a world class program with 19 full-time faculty experts and over 80 courses in this area; and experienced its most successful era of fundraising, culminating in nearly $67 million in giving in the last fiscal year.
Treanor has also advanced Georgetown Law’s commitment to affordability and access. During his tenure, Georgetown has more than doubled financial aid; raised nearly $25 million dollars for the Law Center’s scholarship program for exceptional students with significant financial need; and launched the RISE program, which provides academic support for students from historically underrepresented groups. The Law Center also created the Early Outreach Initiative, which brings the Law Center’s dean of admissions, current law students, and alumni together to encourage students in underserved high schools to consider pursuing careers as lawyers.
In keeping with Georgetown Law’s motto, “Law is but the means; justice is the end,” Treanor has focused on increasing opportunities for students to pursue careers in public interest law. He is proud that nearly 1 in 4 graduates move straight into public service jobs – a ratio higher than any other top law school in America. The Law Center supports post-graduate fellowships that have enabled more than 400 graduates to work in public interest jobs, and, in combination with the law firms ArentFox Schiff and DLA Piper, it has launched the D.C. Affordable Law Firm, a “low bono” law firm where recent Georgetown Law graduates provide legal representation to people of limited means.
The National Jurist magazine has named Treanor one of the most influential people in legal education five times. He is a member of the Morristown (N.J.) High School Hall of Fame. In 2020, he was elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for law and education. Most recently, he was selected for the inaugural Honorable Robert A. Katzmann Award for Academic Excellence by the Burton Awards.
Treanor’s areas of academic expertise include constitutional law, property law, criminal law, intellectual property, and legal history. At Georgetown Law, he has taught a first-year legal justice seminar, an upper-level course on the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, and leadership courses. His writings have principally been in the area of constitutional history, and he has been recognized as one of the 10 most-cited legal history scholars in the United States by the University of Chicago Law School’s Brian Leiter. His early work largely focused on the history of constitutional protections of private property. His article “The Original Understanding of the Takings Clause and the Political Process,” 95 Colum. L. Rev. 782 (1995), was recognized by the Land Use Professors Blog as the most cited land use article of the past 30 years. Treanor’s article, “Judicial Review before Marbury” was cited in the Moore v. Harper (2023) majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts. His recent article, “The Case of the Dishonest Scrivener: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of the Federalist Constitution,” examined the changes that Gouverneur Morris and the Committee of Style made in preparing the Constitution’s final draft. W.W. Norton will publish his upcoming book, Fathers of the Constitution: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Creation of the American Republic.
Before coming to Georgetown, Treanor was Dean and Paul Fuller Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He also served in a variety of positions in the government, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice; Associate Counsel, Office of Independent Counsel during the Iran/Contra investigation. He was law clerk to the Honorable James L. Oakes, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Treanor has a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale College.
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and Director, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law; Director, Classical Liberal Institute, Civitas Institute University of Texas at Austin
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago. He received an LL.D., h.c . from the University of Ghent, 2003 , and an LLD h.c . from the University of Siegen in 2018 and the Bradley Prize in 2011. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985. He has edited both the Journal of Legal Studies (1981-1991) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991-2001). He is also a founder and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law School. His most recent book is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). His other books include Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain ( 1985); Bargaining with the State (1993); Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995); Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty and the Common Good (1998); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Theory of Classical Liberalism (2003); Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration and the Rule of Law (2011), and most recently, The Myth of Birthright citizenship—and Beyond (2026). He has taught courses in , administrative law, antitrust, constitutional, contracts, environmental law, land use planning; real property, torts and water law. He has written and spoken extensively on a wide range of topics, and is writes a regular column for Defining Ideas.
Senior Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Loretta A. Preska is a senior judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She joined the court in 1992 after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush. Preska became the chief judge of the court in May of 2009 when Kimba Wood assumed senior status. She served as chief judge of the court for a seven-year term from 2009 to 2016, and took senior status in 2017.
Preska graduated from the College of St. Rose with her Bachelor's degree in 1970 and also graduated from Fordham Law with her Juris Doctor Degree in 1973. She graduated from NYU Law with her Master of Laws degree in 1978.
Executive Vice President and Dean of the Law Center; Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair; Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
William M. Treanor is the Executive Vice President of Georgetown University, Dean of the Law Center, and Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair. Treanor joined Georgetown in 2010 and was reappointed to serve a third term as Dean and Executive Vice President on July 1, 2020.
Under Treanor’s leadership, Georgetown Law has hired 75 new faculty members; tripled the number of experiential offerings for students in its clinical, externship, and practicum programs; transformed its law and technology offerings into a world class program with 19 full-time faculty experts and over 80 courses in this area; and experienced its most successful era of fundraising, culminating in nearly $67 million in giving in the last fiscal year.
Treanor has also advanced Georgetown Law’s commitment to affordability and access. During his tenure, Georgetown has more than doubled financial aid; raised nearly $25 million dollars for the Law Center’s scholarship program for exceptional students with significant financial need; and launched the RISE program, which provides academic support for students from historically underrepresented groups. The Law Center also created the Early Outreach Initiative, which brings the Law Center’s dean of admissions, current law students, and alumni together to encourage students in underserved high schools to consider pursuing careers as lawyers.
In keeping with Georgetown Law’s motto, “Law is but the means; justice is the end,” Treanor has focused on increasing opportunities for students to pursue careers in public interest law. He is proud that nearly 1 in 4 graduates move straight into public service jobs – a ratio higher than any other top law school in America. The Law Center supports post-graduate fellowships that have enabled more than 400 graduates to work in public interest jobs, and, in combination with the law firms ArentFox Schiff and DLA Piper, it has launched the D.C. Affordable Law Firm, a “low bono” law firm where recent Georgetown Law graduates provide legal representation to people of limited means.
The National Jurist magazine has named Treanor one of the most influential people in legal education five times. He is a member of the Morristown (N.J.) High School Hall of Fame. In 2020, he was elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for law and education. Most recently, he was selected for the inaugural Honorable Robert A. Katzmann Award for Academic Excellence by the Burton Awards.
Treanor’s areas of academic expertise include constitutional law, property law, criminal law, intellectual property, and legal history. At Georgetown Law, he has taught a first-year legal justice seminar, an upper-level course on the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, and leadership courses. His writings have principally been in the area of constitutional history, and he has been recognized as one of the 10 most-cited legal history scholars in the United States by the University of Chicago Law School’s Brian Leiter. His early work largely focused on the history of constitutional protections of private property. His article “The Original Understanding of the Takings Clause and the Political Process,” 95 Colum. L. Rev. 782 (1995), was recognized by the Land Use Professors Blog as the most cited land use article of the past 30 years. Treanor’s article, “Judicial Review before Marbury” was cited in the Moore v. Harper (2023) majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts. His recent article, “The Case of the Dishonest Scrivener: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of the Federalist Constitution,” examined the changes that Gouverneur Morris and the Committee of Style made in preparing the Constitution’s final draft. W.W. Norton will publish his upcoming book, Fathers of the Constitution: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Creation of the American Republic.
Before coming to Georgetown, Treanor was Dean and Paul Fuller Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He also served in a variety of positions in the government, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice; Associate Counsel, Office of Independent Counsel during the Iran/Contra investigation. He was law clerk to the Honorable James L. Oakes, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Treanor has a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale College.
Fox Family Pavilion Distinguished Scholar in Residence, University of Pennsylvania
MARCI A. HAMILTON is a Fox Family Pavilion Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the founder, CEO, and Academic Director of CHILD USA, www.childusa.org, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit academic think tank at the University of Pennsylvania dedicated to interdisciplinary, evidence-based research to prevent child abuse and neglect. Before joining the program on religion at Penn, Professor Hamilton was the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University.
Hamilton is the leading public intellectual critic of extreme religious liberty and its impact on vulnerable populations including children, LGBTQ, and women. The author of God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty (Cambridge University Press), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, she is also a columnist for Verdict on Justia.com. Hamilton successfully challenged the constitutionality of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) at the Supreme Court in Boerne v. Flores (1997), and defeated the RFRA claim brought by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee against hundreds of child sex abuse survivors in Committee of Unsecured Creditors v. Listecki (7th Cir. 2015).
Drawing on her experience studying and advising in cases involving clergy sex abuse, Hamilton is the leading expert on child sex abuse statutes of limitations and has submitted testimony and advised legislators in every state where significant reform has occurred. She is the author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children (Cambridge University Press), which advocates for the elimination of child sex abuse statutes of limitations. She has also filed countless pro bono amicus briefs for the protection of children at the United States Supreme Court and the state supreme courts. Her textbook, Children and the Law, co-authored with Martin Gardner, will be published Fall 2017 by Carolina Academic Press, formerly Lexis/Nexis.
Hamilton clerked for United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Judge Edward R. Becker of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Hamilton has been honored with the 2016 Voice Today, Voice of Gratitude Award; the 2015 Religious Liberty Award, American Humanist Association; the 2014 Freethought Heroine Award; the National Crime Victim Bar Association’s Frank Carrington Champion of Civil Justice Award, 2012; the E. Nathaniel Gates Award for outstanding public advocacy and scholarship, 2008; and selected as a Pennsylvania Woman of the Year Award, 2012, among others. She is also frequently quoted in the national media on RFRA, RLUIPA, First Amendment, clergy sex abuse, and statute of limitations issues.
Professor Hamilton is a graduate of Vanderbilt University, B.A., summa cum laude; Pennsylvania State University, M.A. (English, fiction writing, High Honors); M.A. (Philosophy); and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, J.D., magna cum laude, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Order of the Coif.
Chairman and President, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Kevin J. "Seamus" Hasson is Founder and President of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a bipartisan, public-interest law firm that protects the free expression of all religious traditions. Since 1994, Hasson and the Becket Fund have successfully represented clients from nearly every faith tradition including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Native Americans, Unitarians and Zoroastrians. Along the way, The Becket Fund has won kudos from thinkers from Pope John Paul II to Elie Wiesel.
Hasson enjoys broad credibility in the national media. He has been widely quoted, appearing for example, in Newsweek, US News and World Report, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor and USA Today, as well as in regional media from The L.A. Times to The Chicago Tribune to The Philadelphia Enquirer. He has appeared on broadcast news programs including The Today Show, Dateline NBC, McLaughlin One on One, NPR's Talk of the Nation, and CNN Talkback Live. He's also appeared twice on Al-Jazeera, debating Saudi clerics.
Hasson lectures and debates frequently, in venues ranging from Oxford to the Vatican, from Harvard to BYU. He is the author of The Right to be Wrong: Ending the Culture War over Religion in America.
Before founding the Becket Fund in 1994, Hasson was an attorney at Williams & Connolly in Washington D.C., where he focused on religious liberty litigation. From 1986 to 1987, he served in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department where he advised the White House and cabinet departments on church-state relations. He is a 1985 magna cum laude graduate of Notre Dame Law School and also holds a Master's degree in theology from Notre Dame.
Senior Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Loretta A. Preska is a senior judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She joined the court in 1992 after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush. Preska became the chief judge of the court in May of 2009 when Kimba Wood assumed senior status. She served as chief judge of the court for a seven-year term from 2009 to 2016, and took senior status in 2017.
Preska graduated from the College of St. Rose with her Bachelor's degree in 1970 and also graduated from Fordham Law with her Juris Doctor Degree in 1973. She graduated from NYU Law with her Master of Laws degree in 1978.
Beneficial Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Educated at Princeton, Oxford and Columbia Law School, Charles Fried, the Beneficial Professor of Law, has been teaching at Harvard Law School since 1961. He was Solicitor General of the United States, 1985-89, and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, 1995-99. His scholarly and teaching interests have been moved by the connection between normative theory and the concrete institutions of public and private law. During his career at Harvard he has taught Criminal Law, Commercial Law, Roman Law, Torts, Contracts, Labor Law, Constitutional Law and Federal Courts, Appellate and Supreme Court Advocacy. The author of many books and articles, his Anatomy of Values (1970), Right and Wrong (1978), and Modern Liberty (2006) develop themes in moral and political philosophy with applications to law. Contract as Promise (1980), Making Tort Law (2003, with David Rosenberg) and Saying What the Law Is: The Constitution in the Supreme Court (2004) are fundamental inquiries into broad legal institutions. Order & Law: Arguing the Reagan Revolution (1991) discusses major themes developed in Fried's time as Solicitor General. In recent years Fried has taught Constitutional Law and Contracts. During his time as a teacher he has also argued a number of major cases in state and federal courts, most notably Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, in which the Supreme Court established the standards for the use of expert and scientific evidence in federal courts.
Chairman, Department of Economics, George Mason University
Professor of Law and Economics, Fordham University School of Law
Professor of Corporate & Antitrust Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor Johnson is currently a Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, and teaches in the areas of Contracts, Environmental Law, and Gun Control/Gun Rights. He was previously Professor of Legal Studies in Business at Franklin and Marshall College (1988-93), Of Counsel at Kirkpatrick and Lockhard (1990-93), Vice President and Co-owner Westar Environmental Corporation (1988-90), and an Associate at Morgan, Lewis and Bockius (1985-88).
Andrew P. Morriss is Dean and Anthony G. Buzbee Dean's Endowed Chairholder at Texas A&M School of Law and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Center on Culture and Civil Society at the Independent Institute. He is also a Research Fellow at the Center for Labor and Employment Law at New York University; Senior Fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center; Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; and a regular Visiting Professor at Universidad Francisco Marroquín, in Guatemala. Prior to coming to the University of Illinois, he served as Galen J. Roush Professor of Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Reserve University.
He received his A.B. degree from Princeton University, his J.D. and a masters degree in public affairs from the University of Texas at Austin, and his Ph.D. (economics) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After law school he clerked for U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders in the Northern District of Texas and worked for two years at Texas Rural Legal Aid in Hereford and Plainview, Texas.
Professor Morriss is the author or coauthor of more than forty book chapters and scholarly articles, and he is the co-editor of Cross-Border Human Resources, Labor and Employment Issues: Proceedings of the New York University 54th Annual Conference on Labor (with Samuel Estreicher); Property Stories (with Gerald Korngold); and The Common Law and the Environment (with Roger Meiners). He is the author of the book, Regulation by Litigation (with Bruce Yandle and Andrew Dorchak), and he also regularly writes for The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty and Books & Culture: A Christian Review.
Professor Morriss was recently named one of the Reporters for the Restatement of Employment Law by the American Law Institute (ALI), Senior Fellow for the Institute for Energy Research, and a Reporter for the Restatement of Employment Law by the American Law Institute.
The Elimination of Conscience Clauses: An Assault on Religious Liberty?
Marci A. Hamilton, Kevin J. Hasson, Loretta Preska
The Federalist Society's Fordham Student Chapter presented this panel discussion on September 21, 2009, at Fordham...
Does the Law of Regulatory Takings Impede Growth or Protect the Community?
Fordham Student Chapter
New York, NYThe Elimination of Conscience Clauses: An Assault on Religious Liberty?
Fordham Student Chapter
New York, NYFederal Preemption Laws after the Wyeth and Altria Decisions
To Stimulate, or Not to Stimulate: The Proper Government Response to an Economic Crisis
Reuvain Borchardt, Donald J. Boudreaux, John Pfaff, Richard Squire
The Fordham Student Chapter hosted this debate at Fordham University School of Law on February...
To Stimulate, or Not to Stimulate: The Proper Government Response to an Economic Crisis
Fordham Student Chapter
New York, NYAre Markets Friends or Foes of the Environment?
Nicholas Johnson, Andrew P. Morriss
The Fordham Student Chapter hosted this event at Fordham University School of Law on February...
Are Markets Friends or Foes of the Environment?
Fordham Student Chapter
New York, NYDC v. Heller and the Future of Gun Control Legislation
Alan Gura, Nicholas Johnson, William M. Treanor
The Fordham Student Chapter co-hosted this event on January 22, 2009 with the American Constitution...
DC v. Heller and the Future of Gun Control Legislation
Alan Gura, Nicholas Johnson, William M. Treanor
The Fordham Student Chapter co-hosted this event on January 22, 2009 with the American Constitution...