Senior Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Andrew D. Graham is senior counsel for academic and professional affairs at Alliance Defending Freedom. He develops ADF’s academic initiatives and training programs, including the Blackstone Legal Fellowship. He also regularly speaks at academic gatherings, universities, and think tanks on law, politics, and culture, and creates professional opportunities for ADF’s Blackstone Fellows.
Previously, Graham was a partner at Jackson Walker LLP, a more than 130-year-old law firm with more than 400 lawyers across Texas, where he achieved an extensive record of success in high-stakes litigation in both trial and appellate courts and was named a “Super Lawyers—Rising Star” multiple times.
Graham is an elected member and trustee of The Philadelphia Society, an elected member of The Mont Pelerin Society, and a member of The Federalist Society and the Society for Classical Learning. Additionally, he is a senior fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute, a member of the board of governors of the John Jay Institute, and a member of the advisory council for the Dallas Forum on Law, Politics, and Culture.
Graham earned his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude at Southern Methodist University (SMU), where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and the Hyer Society. He then earned master’s degrees at Oxford University, where he was a member of Oriel College, and The University of Chicago before returning home to Texas to earn his law degree at The University of Texas at Austin School of Law.
He is a member of the State Bar of Texas and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Graham is the first person in his family to go to college and is a first-generation American who holds dual American–Australian citizenship. He and his wife, Molly (a classical Christian school educator), have three children and live in Dallas, Texas.
R. B. Price and Isabelle Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor Emeritus of Law, University of Missouri School of Law
Carl H. Esbeck is R.B. Price Professor and Isabelle Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor of Law emeritus at the University of Missouri. After attending Cornell University School of Law where he served as an editor on the Cornell Law Review, he held a judicial clerkship with the Honorable Howard C. Bratton, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in New Mexico.
Professor Esbeck publishes widely in the area of religious liberty and church-state relations. He is recognized as the progenitor of "Charitable Choice," an integral part of the 1996 Federal Welfare Reform Act, later made a part of the faith-based initiative and equal-treatment regulations under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In addition, he has taken the lead in recognizing that the modern Supreme Court has applied the Establishment Clause not as a personal right, but as a structural limit on the government's authority in disputes involving church governance. While on leave from 1999 to 2002, Professor Esbeck directed the Center for Law & Religious Freedom (CLRF) and later served as Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. While directing the CLRF, Professor Esbeck was a central part of the congressional advocacy behind the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). While at the Department of Justice one of his duties was to direct a task force to remove barriers to the equal-treatment of faith-based organizations applying for social service grants. He is the author of Disestablishment and Religious Dissent: Church-State Relations in the New American States, 1776 - 1833 (U. of MO Press, 2019).
Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History at Northwestern University School of Law
Stephen Presser is a leading American legal historian and expert on shareholder liability for corporate debts. He is frequently an invited witness before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on issues of constitutional law. He holds a joint appointment with the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management and also teaches in Northwestern's history department.
Senior Scholar, The Fund for American Studies
Donald J. Devine (born 1937) is an American political scientist and former government official, who has popularized fusionism as taught by Frank Meyer. He is associated to The Fund for American Studies and The Heritage Foundation. He is also a trustee of the Philadelphia Society.
Devine served as the Office of Personnel Management director of Ronald Reagan's first administration. During his tenure, he helped cut 100,000 federal jobs, and over $6 billion in benefits. He was labeled by The Washington Post as a "terrible swift sword of the civil service", by The New York Times as "the Grinch", and by Federal Times as the "Rasputin of the reduction in force".
Devine taught government and politics at the University of Maryland, and Western civilization at Bellevue University. He has written more than ten libertarian conservative books, and was a contributor to Project 2025.
The Wisdom of Our Ancestors
Andrew D. Graham
A review of Graham James McAleer & Alexander S. Rosenthal-Pubul, The Wisdom of Our Ancestors:...
An Extended Essay on Church Autonomy
Carl H. Esbeck
The doctrine of church autonomy[1] is distinct from the two more familiar lines of cases...
Law Professors: Three Centuries of Shaping American Law
Colorado Lawyers Chapter
Denver, COTopics
New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. City of New York
For the first time in a decade, the Supreme Court has decided to hear a...
The Political Science Constitution—What It Implies For Your Future
Birmingham, AlabamaA Tavern Debate Resolved: All Good Things Must Come to an End!
Chicago, IllinoisThe Inspirational Power of American Constitutionalism
It is my belief that the normative order of society, that is, its system of...