President and CEO, First Liberty Institute
Kelly Shackelford, Esq., is President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, the largest legal firm in the nation dedicated exclusively to protecting religious freedom for all Americans. He has served in this role since 1997, leading First Liberty’s efforts to defend religious freedom in the courts and in the public arena. Under his leadership, First Liberty’s legal team has participated in cases before the United States Supreme Court, federal courts of appeals, federal district courts and various state courts, where they have won more than 90 percent of their cases.
Shackelford is a constitutional scholar who has argued before the United States Supreme Court, testified before the U.S. House and Senate, and has won a number of landmark First Amendment and religious liberty cases.
He was recently named one of the 25 greatest Texas lawyers of the past quarter-century by Texas Lawyer and is the recipient of the prestigious William Bentley Ball Award for Life and Religious Freedom Defense for pioneering work protecting religious freedom.
Shackelford is a highly sought-after speaker and frequent guest on national news and talk shows including Good Morning America, The Today Show, The O’Reilly Factor, CNN, Fox and Friends, MSNBC, and Hannity. He also has been featured in the National Law Journal, Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Times, The Washington Post, and The L.A. Times, and many others.
Shackelford is on the Board of Trustees of the United States Supreme Court Historical Society and earned his law degree from Baylor University.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
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Richard J. Sullivan was sworn in as a United States Circuit Court Judge for the Second Circuit in October 2018. Before that, Judge Sullivan served for eleven years as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Prior to becoming a judge, he served as the General Counsel and Managing Director of Marsh Inc., the world's leading risk management and insurance brokerage firm. From 1994 to 2005, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he was Chief of the International Narcotics Trafficking Unit and Director of the New York/New Jersey Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. In 2003, he was awarded the Henry L. Stimson Medal from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. In 1998, he was named the Federal Law Enforcement Association's Prosecutor of the Year. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, he was a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York and a law clerk to the Honorable David M. Ebel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, the College of William & Mary, and Chaminade High School on Long Island. From 1986 to 1987, he served as a New York City Urban Fellow under New York City Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward. Judge Sullivan is on the executive board of the New York American Inn of Court and the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University School of Law. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, where he teaches courses on sentencing and jurisprudence, and he previously served as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, where he taught courses on white collar crime and trial advocacy and was named Adjunct Professor of the Year.
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Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional Law, Columbia Law School
A leading administrative and constitutional law scholar, Gillian Metzger ’96 writes and teaches in the areas of administrative law, constitutional law, and federal courts, with an emphasis on federalism and privatization. In 2023-2024, she served as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice.
Metzger's recent work covers topics ranging from constitutional attacks on the administrative state to appropriations, administrative law under the Roberts Court, and the role of administrative agencies in a polarized world. In 2015, Metzger won the American Bar Association Administrative Law Section Annual Scholarship Award for “The Constitutional Duty to Supervise,” which examined presidential control and oversight of the modern administrative state. She is a co-editor of Gellhorn & Byse’s Administrative Law: Cases and Comments, 13th ed. (Foundation Press, 2023), a seminal administrative law casebook.
Professor Metzger was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and is a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States. In 2020, she was awarded Columbia University's Faculty Mentorship Award and in 2014, the Law School’s graduating class awarded Metzger the Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching, recognizing, among many other accomplishments, her commitment to mentoring new generations of law students.
In 2012, Metzger helped launch Columbia Law School’s Center for Constitutional Governance (CCG)—where she now serves as faculty director—a nonpartisan legal and policy organization devoted to the study of constitutional structure and authority. CCG brings together a diverse group of constitutional scholars to explore policy areas such as health care, civil rights, immigration, financial regulation, and national security.
Metzger also has co-authored and filed numerous amicus briefs in major constitutional and administrative law challenges before the Supreme Court and other courts. Most recently, Metzger filed a brief in Seila Law Center v. CFPB, a separation of powers challenge, and in Kisor v. Wilkie, a case involving judicial deference to agencies. She has also filed briefs in cases involving reproductive rights and the Affordable Care Act, among others.
Previously, Metzger served as vice dean of intellectual life at Columbia Law School. Before joining the Law School, she worked as an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice. Metzger also clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59 and Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In 2018, Metzger moderated a panel discussion with Justice Ginsburg on impact litigation at Columbia Law School.
Partner, Baker Hostetler LLP
David Rivkin is a member of the firm's litigation, international and environmental teams and is co-leader of the firm's national appellate practice. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, David draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), anti-boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues.
David has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, book reviews and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV and radio shows including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and PBS.
Senior US District Judge, US District Court for the Southern District of New York
Senior Fellow, National Review
Bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy is a contributing editor at National Review, a senior fellow at National Review Institute, and a Fox News contributor. He is a former Chief Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York and led the terrorism prosecution against the “Blind Sheikh” (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven other jihadists for conducting a war of urban terrorism against the United States that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. During is 20-year career as a prosecutor, he received numerous honors, including the Justice Department’s highest awards. Andy speaks and writes widely on law and national security, radical Islam, politics, and culture. He has testified before Congress as an expert on issues of constitutional law, counterterrorism, and law-enforcement. He is a columnist for The Hill, and his essays and book reviews appear frequently at The New Criterion. His most recent New York Times bestselling book is Ball of Collusion (Encounter Books, 2019), about the Russiagate controversy (an updated version was published in 2020). His other books include Willful Blindness (2008), The Grand Jihad (2010), Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy (2012), and Faithless Execution (2014). He has also written several pamphlets in the Broadside series published by Encounter Books, most recently Islam and Free Speech (2015).
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.
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.
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown Law
After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1971, Professor Seidman served as a law clerk for J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He then was a staff attorney with the D.C. Public Defender Service until joining the Law Center faculty in 1976. He teaches a variety of courses in the fields of constitutional and criminal law. He is co-author of a constitutional law casebook and the author of many articles concerning criminal justice and constitutional law. His most recent books are Silence and Freedom (Stanford 2007), Our Unsettled Constitution: A New Defense of Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (Yale 2001) and Equal Protection of the Laws (Foundation 2002).
Counsel, The Judicial Confirmation Network
Wendy Long is legal counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network. Until March 2005, she was a litigation partner in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Wendy was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to Judge Ralph Winter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. She is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law, cum laude and Order of the Coif, where she was articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review, and of Dartmouth College. She previously served as a press secretary in the U.S. Senate, for former U.S. Senator Bill Armstrong (R-Colo.) and former U.S. Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.).
Director, William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and t, The Witherspoon Institute
Matthew J. Franck is the Director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University, in Virginia, where he taught constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy from 1989 to 2010, and was Chairman of the Department of Political Science from 1995 to 2010. He is also a Visiting Lecturer in Politics at Princeton University.
Professor Franck earned his B.A. in political science from Virginia Wesleyan College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Northern Illinois University. He has taught at Marquette University and Southern Illinois University, and was a Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the Graduate School of International Studies, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 1998, and a Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, in 2008-09.
He is the author, editor of, or contributor to several books on religious freedom, constitutional law, the Supreme Court, and American politics, and has published essays and reviews in numerous academic journals, as well as many general-interest articles and commentaries in newspapers, magazines, and online, including the Washington Post, First Things, National Review, and Public Discourse, the daily online essay publication of the Witherspoon Institute.
Professor Franck is a regular blogger on National Review Online’s “Bench Memos” page and the “First Thoughts” page at First Things magazine, and has appeared numerous times on Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” radio show, as well as on CNN, Fox News Channel, NPR, and Relevant Radio.
Partner, Goldstein & Russell PC
Thomas C. Goldstein has argued 28 cases before the Supreme Court, including matters involving federal patent law, class action practice, labor and employment, and disability law. In addition to practicing law, Tom teaches Supreme Court Litigation at Harvard Law School and taught at Stanford Law School as well from 2004-2012.
In the Supreme Court and elsewhere, Mr. Goldstein litigates and advises clients in a broad range of issues. For example, he regularly litigates and lectures on questions of federal patent law. Mr. Goldstein frequently advises clients, litigates, and consults on legislative matters relating to the First Amendment. And he regularly represents parties in questions relating to the game of poker, including its lawfulness as a matter of federal and state law. Tom's clients include plaintiffs, criminal defendants, and major corporations such as BG Group, Home Depot, Humana, IMS Health, Nike, PokerStars, POM Wonderful, and Pemex.
In addition to practicing law, Tom founded, and is the publisher of, SCOTUSblog, which in 2013 became the only weblog ever to receive the Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media. It also won the 2013 Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi) prize for deadline reporting for its coverage of the Supreme Court’s healthcare ruling. In 2010, it became the first blog to receive the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for fostering the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system.
Tom has been repeatedly recognized as a leading member of the bar. In 2010, The National Law Journal named him one of the 40 most influential lawyers of the decade; Tom notably was ten years younger than any other law firm partner listed. Legal Times named him one of the “90 Greatest Washington Lawyers of the Last 30 Years” and praised him for “transforming the practice” of law before the Supreme Court. He is also included in both of the National Law Journal’s most recent lists of the nation’s 100 most influential lawyers (2006 and 2013). He has been repeatedly recognized as one of the nation’s top appellate advocates. GQ Magazine named him one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington, D.C.
Tom is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and a member of the American Law Institute. He is involved with a number of professional organizations. He serves as the vice chair of the Amicus Committee of the ABA’s Intellectual Property Section and previously served for two years on the ABA’s Standing Committee on Amicus Curiae Briefs. In those capacities, he has authored several Supreme Court amicus briefs for the ABA. In addition, Tom serves on the boards of advisors of the Washington Legal Foundation and the Georgetown University Supreme Court Institute.
Before founding Goldstein & Howe in 1999, Tom practiced law at Boies & Schiller, LLP and at Jones Day Reavis & Pogue. Tom left the firm he founded in 2006 to create the Supreme Court Practice at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, where he also was a partner and principal co-chair of the firmwide litigation practice. He returned to what is now Goldstein & Russell in 2011.
Tom clerked for the Honorable Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado Law School
Scott Moss joined CU Law School in 2007 after six years as an attorney in New York City and three years as a professor at Marquette Law School, where he was the 2007 recipient of the James D. Ghiardi Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching, Student Body Support, and Scholarship. In New York, Professor Moss was a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Constance Baker Motley and then a plaintiff's employment lawyer at Outten & Golden LLP, the largest plaintiff-side employment law practice in the country, where he litigated individual and class action cases of discrimination, harassment, and minimum/overtime wage violations. He also has argued and briefed appeals of employment cases and has undertaken pro bono projects such as First Amendment right-to-protest litigation with the New York Civil Liberties Union, low-income worker clinics in lower Manhattan, and court-sponsored mediations for pro se litigants. Professor Moss received his J.D. (magna cum laude) in 1998 from Harvard Law School, where he was a Senior Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review; his B.A. (Economics) and M.A. (Media Studies) are from Stanford University. Professor Moss's research interests have included employment law, discrimination, constitutional law, various civil procedure rules, and economic analysis of all of the preceding topics.
B.A., Stanford
M.A., Stanford
J.D., Harvard
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.
Distinguished Senior Fellow and Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.
Mr. Whelan directs EPPC’s program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process. As a contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog, he has been a leading commentator on nominations to the Supreme Court and the lower courts and on issues of constitutional law. He has written essays and op-eds for leading newspapers—including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—opinion journals, and academic symposia and law reviews. The National Law Journal has named Mr. Whelan among its “Champions and Visionaries” in the practice of law in D.C.
Mr. Whelan is co-editor of three volumes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s work: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived (Crown Forum, 2017), a New York Times bestselling collection of speeches by Justice Scalia; On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer (Crown Forum, 2019), a collection of Justice Scalia’s writings on faith and religion; and The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law (Crown Forum, 2020), a collection of Justice Scalia’s views on legal issues.
Mr. Whelan, a lawyer and a former law clerk to Justice Scalia, has served in positions of responsibility in all three branches of the federal government. From just before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, until joining EPPC in 2004, Mr. Whelan was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the White House Counsel’s Office, the Attorney General and other senior DOJ officials, and departments and agencies throughout the executive branch on difficult and sensitive legal questions. Mr. Whelan previously served on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to clerking for Justice Scalia, he was a law clerk to Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In 1981 Mr. Whelan graduated with honors from Harvard College and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1985 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review.
For more on Mr. Whelan’s background, see this interview.
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown Law
After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1971, Professor Seidman served as a law clerk for J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He then was a staff attorney with the D.C. Public Defender Service until joining the Law Center faculty in 1976. He teaches a variety of courses in the fields of constitutional and criminal law. He is co-author of a constitutional law casebook and the author of many articles concerning criminal justice and constitutional law. His most recent books are Silence and Freedom (Stanford 2007), Our Unsettled Constitution: A New Defense of Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (Yale 2001) and Equal Protection of the Laws (Foundation 2002).
Counsel, The Judicial Confirmation Network
Wendy Long is legal counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network. Until March 2005, she was a litigation partner in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Wendy was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to Judge Ralph Winter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. She is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law, cum laude and Order of the Coif, where she was articles editor of the Northwestern University Law Review, and of Dartmouth College. She previously served as a press secretary in the U.S. Senate, for former U.S. Senator Bill Armstrong (R-Colo.) and former U.S. Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.).
Director, William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and t, The Witherspoon Institute
Matthew J. Franck is the Director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University, in Virginia, where he taught constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy from 1989 to 2010, and was Chairman of the Department of Political Science from 1995 to 2010. He is also a Visiting Lecturer in Politics at Princeton University.
Professor Franck earned his B.A. in political science from Virginia Wesleyan College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Northern Illinois University. He has taught at Marquette University and Southern Illinois University, and was a Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the Graduate School of International Studies, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 1998, and a Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, in 2008-09.
He is the author, editor of, or contributor to several books on religious freedom, constitutional law, the Supreme Court, and American politics, and has published essays and reviews in numerous academic journals, as well as many general-interest articles and commentaries in newspapers, magazines, and online, including the Washington Post, First Things, National Review, and Public Discourse, the daily online essay publication of the Witherspoon Institute.
Professor Franck is a regular blogger on National Review Online’s “Bench Memos” page and the “First Thoughts” page at First Things magazine, and has appeared numerous times on Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” radio show, as well as on CNN, Fox News Channel, NPR, and Relevant Radio.
Partner, Goldstein & Russell PC
Thomas C. Goldstein has argued 28 cases before the Supreme Court, including matters involving federal patent law, class action practice, labor and employment, and disability law. In addition to practicing law, Tom teaches Supreme Court Litigation at Harvard Law School and taught at Stanford Law School as well from 2004-2012.
In the Supreme Court and elsewhere, Mr. Goldstein litigates and advises clients in a broad range of issues. For example, he regularly litigates and lectures on questions of federal patent law. Mr. Goldstein frequently advises clients, litigates, and consults on legislative matters relating to the First Amendment. And he regularly represents parties in questions relating to the game of poker, including its lawfulness as a matter of federal and state law. Tom's clients include plaintiffs, criminal defendants, and major corporations such as BG Group, Home Depot, Humana, IMS Health, Nike, PokerStars, POM Wonderful, and Pemex.
In addition to practicing law, Tom founded, and is the publisher of, SCOTUSblog, which in 2013 became the only weblog ever to receive the Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media. It also won the 2013 Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi) prize for deadline reporting for its coverage of the Supreme Court’s healthcare ruling. In 2010, it became the first blog to receive the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for fostering the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system.
Tom has been repeatedly recognized as a leading member of the bar. In 2010, The National Law Journal named him one of the 40 most influential lawyers of the decade; Tom notably was ten years younger than any other law firm partner listed. Legal Times named him one of the “90 Greatest Washington Lawyers of the Last 30 Years” and praised him for “transforming the practice” of law before the Supreme Court. He is also included in both of the National Law Journal’s most recent lists of the nation’s 100 most influential lawyers (2006 and 2013). He has been repeatedly recognized as one of the nation’s top appellate advocates. GQ Magazine named him one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington, D.C.
Tom is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and a member of the American Law Institute. He is involved with a number of professional organizations. He serves as the vice chair of the Amicus Committee of the ABA’s Intellectual Property Section and previously served for two years on the ABA’s Standing Committee on Amicus Curiae Briefs. In those capacities, he has authored several Supreme Court amicus briefs for the ABA. In addition, Tom serves on the boards of advisors of the Washington Legal Foundation and the Georgetown University Supreme Court Institute.
Before founding Goldstein & Howe in 1999, Tom practiced law at Boies & Schiller, LLP and at Jones Day Reavis & Pogue. Tom left the firm he founded in 2006 to create the Supreme Court Practice at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, where he also was a partner and principal co-chair of the firmwide litigation practice. He returned to what is now Goldstein & Russell in 2011.
Tom clerked for the Honorable Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado Law School
Scott Moss joined CU Law School in 2007 after six years as an attorney in New York City and three years as a professor at Marquette Law School, where he was the 2007 recipient of the James D. Ghiardi Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching, Student Body Support, and Scholarship. In New York, Professor Moss was a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Constance Baker Motley and then a plaintiff's employment lawyer at Outten & Golden LLP, the largest plaintiff-side employment law practice in the country, where he litigated individual and class action cases of discrimination, harassment, and minimum/overtime wage violations. He also has argued and briefed appeals of employment cases and has undertaken pro bono projects such as First Amendment right-to-protest litigation with the New York Civil Liberties Union, low-income worker clinics in lower Manhattan, and court-sponsored mediations for pro se litigants. Professor Moss received his J.D. (magna cum laude) in 1998 from Harvard Law School, where he was a Senior Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review; his B.A. (Economics) and M.A. (Media Studies) are from Stanford University. Professor Moss's research interests have included employment law, discrimination, constitutional law, various civil procedure rules, and economic analysis of all of the preceding topics.
B.A., Stanford
M.A., Stanford
J.D., Harvard
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.
Distinguished Senior Fellow and Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.
Mr. Whelan directs EPPC’s program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process. As a contributor to National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog, he has been a leading commentator on nominations to the Supreme Court and the lower courts and on issues of constitutional law. He has written essays and op-eds for leading newspapers—including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—opinion journals, and academic symposia and law reviews. The National Law Journal has named Mr. Whelan among its “Champions and Visionaries” in the practice of law in D.C.
Mr. Whelan is co-editor of three volumes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s work: Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived (Crown Forum, 2017), a New York Times bestselling collection of speeches by Justice Scalia; On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer (Crown Forum, 2019), a collection of Justice Scalia’s writings on faith and religion; and The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law (Crown Forum, 2020), a collection of Justice Scalia’s views on legal issues.
Mr. Whelan, a lawyer and a former law clerk to Justice Scalia, has served in positions of responsibility in all three branches of the federal government. From just before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, until joining EPPC in 2004, Mr. Whelan was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the White House Counsel’s Office, the Attorney General and other senior DOJ officials, and departments and agencies throughout the executive branch on difficult and sensitive legal questions. Mr. Whelan previously served on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to clerking for Justice Scalia, he was a law clerk to Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In 1981 Mr. Whelan graduated with honors from Harvard College and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1985 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review.
For more on Mr. Whelan’s background, see this interview.
Salazar v. Buono: The Establishment Clause and It's Implications for Religious Imagery & Expression in the Public Forum
Is Government Health Care Constitutional?
New York City Lawyers Chapter
New York, NYThree Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
The Department of Justice
Does the Law of Regulatory Takings Impede Growth or Protect the Community?
Richard A. Epstein, Loretta Preska, William M. Treanor
The Federalist Society's Fordham Student Chapter presented this panel discussion on September 22, 2009, at Fordham...
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, NYThe Sotomayor Nomination, Part III
Louis Michael Seidman, Wendy Long, Matthew J. Franck, Thomas C. Goldstein, Scott Moss, David R. Stras, Edward Whelan
On May 26th, President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter as an Associate...
The Sotomayor Nomination, Part II
Louis Michael Seidman, Wendy Long, Matthew J. Franck, Thomas C. Goldstein, Scott Moss, David R. Stras, Edward Whelan
On May 26, President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter as an Associate...