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Steven T. Collis

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  • Steven T. Collis
Jan 4 2024
Thursday 3:00 p.m. EDT    

7 Minute Presentations of Works in Progress Panel 1-A

Washington, DC
Speakers:
Steven T. Collis • Sean J. Griffith • Benjamin Bryant Johnson • Tyler B. Lindley • Michael P. Moreland • Dwight Newman
  • In-Person Event
Jan 4 2024
Thursday 10:00 a.m. EDT    

25th Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference

Washington, DC
  • In-Person Event
Mar 4 2023
Saturday 12:45 p.m. CDT    

Lunch & Breakout Session B: Becoming an Academic

2023 National Student Symposium

Austin, TX
Speakers:
Stephanie Barclay • Steven T. Collis • Tara Leigh Grove • Derek T. Muller • Lee Liberman Otis
  • In-Person Event
Oct 15 2021
Friday 8:00 a.m. CDT    

Religious Exemptions: An Overview of the Current Legal Landscape & the Best Arguments For and Against

At the 2021 Nebraska State Bar Annual Meeting

Speakers:
Steven T. Collis
Sponsors:
Nebraska Lawyer Chapter
James Madison Portrait
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Speaker Information
Steven T. Collis

Steven T. Collis

Clinical Professor, University of Texas at Austin School of Law

Biography

Steven T. Collis researches and teaches on religion and law and other First Amendment topics. He is the founding faculty director of the Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center and of Texas's Law & Religion Clinic. On the topic of religious freedom law, he is a sought-after speaker to academic and lay audiences across the United States, including foreign diplomats from countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South America on behalf of the United States State Department. He has been interviewed by and quoted in various news and media outlets, including The Deseret News, Bloomberg, The Washington Times, Law360, The Salt Lake Tribune, PBS, The Denver Business Journal, Law Week Colorado, CBN News, and numerous podcasts and television shows. His scholarly work has appeared in The Michigan Law Review, The Nebraska Law Review, The University of Denver Law Review Online, and in his book Deep Conviction, which brings to life the history of free exercise law in the United States for lay audiences.  

Prior to joining Texas, Steven was the Olin-Darling Research Fellow in the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. 

Earlier in his career, he was an equity partner at Holland & Hart LLP, where he chaired the firm’s nationwide religious institutions and First Amendment practice group and was a member of the firm's complex civil litigation and employment practice groups. He also taught religious liberty law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and clerked for Chief Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. 

Steven graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an editor on The Michigan Law Review and The Michigan Journal of Race and Law. He also holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he served as the associate editor of the literary journal Blackbird. He completed his undergraduate studies, with university honors, at Brigham Young University. 

 

  • University of Michigan Law School (J.D., 2008)
  • Virginia Commonwealth University (M.F.A., 2006)
  • Brigham Young University (B.A., 2003)
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Sean J. Griffith

Sean J. Griffith

T.J. Maloney Chair in Business Law, Fordham University School of Law

Biography

Professor Griffith is an expert in corporate and financial regulatory law. He writes and speaks on corporate law, political economy, and the constitutional rights of corporations and other business associations. In addition to his academic writing, he has authored or contributed to many amicus briefs, including: Iowa v SEC, NCPPR v SEC, AFBR v SEC, and In re Tesla.

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Speaker Information
Benjamin Bryant Johnson

Benjamin Bryant Johnson

Associate Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law

Biography

Professor Ben Johnson is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. He researches and writes on governance by committees. Sometimes, the governing committee is a board of directors. Other times, it is a committee of justices at the Supreme Court. His research has won awards from national organizations in law (AALS) and political science (APSA) and can be found in law reviews and peer reviewed outlets. His recent work on the Supreme Court has been published in the Columbia Law Review and Alabama Law Review. Earlier work on district judges with financial conflicts (published in the North Carolina Law Review) led to a large exposé in the Wall Street Journal. His game theoretic model of corporate fiduciary duties is forthcoming at the BYU Law Review. He has ongoing projects on the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket, corporate fiduciary duties, shareholder voting, and machine learning.

Professor Johnson teaches Corporations (the only course in the curriculum where students learn to build and maintain institutions that can make the world a better place long after they are gone), Empirical Methods for Lawyers, and topics on the federal judiciary.

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Speaker Information
Tyler B. Lindley

Tyler B. Lindley

Associate Professor of Law, J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University

Biography

Tyler Lindley joined BYU Law School in 2024 as an Associate Professor of Law. His research centers on the judicial role and the historical evolution of the judiciary in America. He has extensively examined and published on judicial remedies, federal courts, constitutional law, and administrative law. His scholarly contributions have been or will be featured in the Alabama Law Review, BYU Law Review, Georgia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Wake Forest Law Review.

Professor Lindley holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Brigham Young University (2018) and a Juris Doctor from The University of Chicago Law School (2021). During his legal studies, he served as a judicial extern for Judge Ryan Nelson on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to joining the faculty at BYU Law, he clerked for Chief Judge William Pryor on the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and Judge Gregory Katsas on the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He also served as a Research Fellow at BYU Law between his clerkships.

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Michael P. Moreland

Michael P. Moreland

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

Biography

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.

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Dwight Newman

Dwight Newman

Professor, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Rights in Constitutional and International Law, University of Saskatchewan College of Law

Biography

Dwight Newman, B.A. in Economics (Regina), J.D. (Saskatchewan), B.C.L., M.Phil., D.Phil. in Legal Philosophy (Oxford), is a Professor of Law and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Rights in Constitutional and International Law at the University of Saskatchewan, where he started in a faculty position in 2005 and has also served a three-year term as Associate Dean.  He has been a Canada Research Chair since 2013. 

Dr. Newman has also taught during visiting terms at Alberta, McGill, Osgoode Hall (PD), and Oxford. During the 2015-16 year, he was a James Madison Visiting Fellow at Princeton University, and during the second half of the 2016-17 year he was a Professeur invité at the Université de Montréal Faculté de Droit and a Herbert Smith Freehills Visitor at Cambridge University.  In 2017 he became a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada. 

Dr. Newman has published close to a hundred articles or book chapters and ten books. His books include: The Duty to Consult: New Relationships with Aboriginal Peoples (Purich/UBC, 2009), Community and Collective Rights: A Theoretical Framework for Rights Held by Groups (Hart/Bloomsbury, 2011), Natural Resource Jurisdiction in Canada (LexisNexis, 2013), Revisiting the Duty to Consult Aboriginal Peoples (Purich/UBC, 2014) and both the Charter of Rights volume of Halsbury’s Laws of Canada and The Law of the Canadian Constitution (with co-author Guy Régimbald) (LexisNexis, 2013, 2nd edn 2017).  His forthcoming books include Mining Law of Canada (LexisNexis), an edited collection on Business Implications of Aboriginal Law (LexisNexis),  and the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on the International Law of Indigenous Rights (Edward Elgar).  His writing has been cited by all levels of Canadian courts, including a number of times by the Supreme Court of Canada, and in argument before the United States Supreme Court.

Dr. Newman is a Munk Senior Fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and has contributed to policy discussions by publishing a number of think tank reports.  He also serves as an expert member of the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on Implementation of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and contributes to ongoing discussion on international norms on related issues.  He has delivered dozens of presentations to a variety of audiences on six continents and has published many op eds in leading Canadian and American newspapers. 

Prior to entering a faculty role, Dr. Newman clerked for Chief Justice Lamer and Justice LeBel at the Supreme Court of Canada, worked for NGOs in South Africa and Hong Kong and for the Canadian Department of Justice, and completed his graduate studies at Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.  He has lived in half a dozen countries and has travelled to over seventy countries.

Dr. Newman is a member of the Ontario and Saskatchewan bars and he does selective legal work for industry, government, and Indigenous communities focused mainly on constitutional issues associated with resource development as well as consulting work on related issues for international investment entities.

Some of his publications are available on his Google Scholar page and his SSRN page.

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Stephanie Barclay

Stephanie Barclay

Professor of Law and Faculty Director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, Georgetown University Law Center

Biography

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.

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Steven T. Collis

Steven T. Collis

Clinical Professor, University of Texas at Austin School of Law

Biography

Steven T. Collis researches and teaches on religion and law and other First Amendment topics. He is the founding faculty director of the Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center and of Texas's Law & Religion Clinic. On the topic of religious freedom law, he is a sought-after speaker to academic and lay audiences across the United States, including foreign diplomats from countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South America on behalf of the United States State Department. He has been interviewed by and quoted in various news and media outlets, including The Deseret News, Bloomberg, The Washington Times, Law360, The Salt Lake Tribune, PBS, The Denver Business Journal, Law Week Colorado, CBN News, and numerous podcasts and television shows. His scholarly work has appeared in The Michigan Law Review, The Nebraska Law Review, The University of Denver Law Review Online, and in his book Deep Conviction, which brings to life the history of free exercise law in the United States for lay audiences.  

Prior to joining Texas, Steven was the Olin-Darling Research Fellow in the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. 

Earlier in his career, he was an equity partner at Holland & Hart LLP, where he chaired the firm’s nationwide religious institutions and First Amendment practice group and was a member of the firm's complex civil litigation and employment practice groups. He also taught religious liberty law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and clerked for Chief Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. 

Steven graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an editor on The Michigan Law Review and The Michigan Journal of Race and Law. He also holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he served as the associate editor of the literary journal Blackbird. He completed his undergraduate studies, with university honors, at Brigham Young University. 

 

  • University of Michigan Law School (J.D., 2008)
  • Virginia Commonwealth University (M.F.A., 2006)
  • Brigham Young University (B.A., 2003)
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Tara Leigh Grove

Tara Leigh Grove

Vinson & Elkins Chair in Law, University of Texas at Austin School of Law

Biography

Tara Leigh Grove is the Vinson & Elkins Chair in Law at the University of Texas School of Law. Grove graduated summa cum laude from Duke University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she served as the Supreme Court Chair of the Harvard Law Review. Grove clerked for Judge Emilio Garza on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and then spent four years as an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Appellate Staff, where she argued fifteen cases in the courts of appeals.

Grove’s research focuses on the federal judiciary, interpretive theory, and the constitutional separation of powers. She has published with such prestigious law journals as the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Texas Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, and the Vanderbilt Law Review. Grove has received awards for both her research and her teaching.

In 2021, Grove served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, a bipartisan commission created by President Biden and charged with examining proposals for Supreme Court reform. Since 2022, Grove has worked on the Princeton Initiative on Reclaiming the Constitutional Powers of Congress, which brings together former members of Congress, political scientists, and law professors. Grove serves as the Co-Chair of the section on the Appointments Process for the Princeton Initiative. Grove is a co-author of Low & Jeffries' Federal Courts and the Law of Federal-State Relations, a leading federal courts casebook, and she has served as the Chair of the Federal Courts Section of the Association of American Law Schools. Grove has been a visiting professor at both Harvard Law School and Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

 
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Derek T. Muller

Derek T. Muller

Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School

Biography

Professor Derek Muller is a nationally-recognized scholar in the field of election law. His research focuses on the role of states in the administration of federal elections, the constitutional contours of voting rights and election administration, the limits of judicial power in the domain of elections, and the Electoral College.

He has published more than two dozen academic works, and his op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has testified before Congress, and he is a contributor at the Election Law Blog. He is a co-author on a Federal Courts casebook published by Carolina Academic Press. He is also the co-reporter on a new Restatement of the Law, Election Litigation, an effort led by the American Law Institute.

Professor Muller teaches Election Law, Civil Procedure, and Evidence.

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Lee Liberman Otis

Lee Liberman Otis

Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies

Biography

B.A., Yale; J.D., University of Chicago. Lee Liberman Otis is the Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor to the President at the Federalist Society. She also serves as a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference (ACUS), and as the co-chair of the National Constitution Center's Coalition of Freedom Advisory Board. She previously was a special assistant and an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, General Counsel of the Department of Energy, an associate in the appellate section of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, an associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush, and a law clerk to Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. She also served as an assistant professor of law at George Mason, where she taught legislation, federal jurisdiction, constitutional law, civil procedure, and appellate advocacy. Ms. Otis has been an important member of the Federalist Society team since the organization’s beginnings. Together with David McIntosh, she led the effort to start what became the Chicago chapter of the Society. She also helped organize the Society’s first conference at Yale, its second conference at Chicago, and its first Lawyers Division chapter in Washington DC, as well as the effort to incorporate the Society, recruit its permanent staff, and obtain its early funding. She was a Founding Director of the Federalist Society.

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Steven T. Collis

Steven T. Collis

Clinical Professor, University of Texas at Austin School of Law

Biography

Steven T. Collis researches and teaches on religion and law and other First Amendment topics. He is the founding faculty director of the Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center and of Texas's Law & Religion Clinic. On the topic of religious freedom law, he is a sought-after speaker to academic and lay audiences across the United States, including foreign diplomats from countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South America on behalf of the United States State Department. He has been interviewed by and quoted in various news and media outlets, including The Deseret News, Bloomberg, The Washington Times, Law360, The Salt Lake Tribune, PBS, The Denver Business Journal, Law Week Colorado, CBN News, and numerous podcasts and television shows. His scholarly work has appeared in The Michigan Law Review, The Nebraska Law Review, The University of Denver Law Review Online, and in his book Deep Conviction, which brings to life the history of free exercise law in the United States for lay audiences.  

Prior to joining Texas, Steven was the Olin-Darling Research Fellow in the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. 

Earlier in his career, he was an equity partner at Holland & Hart LLP, where he chaired the firm’s nationwide religious institutions and First Amendment practice group and was a member of the firm's complex civil litigation and employment practice groups. He also taught religious liberty law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and clerked for Chief Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. 

Steven graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an editor on The Michigan Law Review and The Michigan Journal of Race and Law. He also holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he served as the associate editor of the literary journal Blackbird. He completed his undergraduate studies, with university honors, at Brigham Young University. 

 

  • University of Michigan Law School (J.D., 2008)
  • Virginia Commonwealth University (M.F.A., 2006)
  • Brigham Young University (B.A., 2003)
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