Bill Atkin is generally responsible for the delivery of legal services in connection with the international activities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Bill holds an LL.M. from Columbia University School of Law (emphasis on international and comparative law) and a J.D. from Arizona State University College of Law. From 1979 to 1996 he was with the law firm Baker & McKenzie: Partner, Moscow, 1992 to 1996 (Managing Partner of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv and Almaty offices); San Francisco, 1987 to 1992 (Managing Partner of San Francisco and Palo Alto Offices, 1990 to 1992); Taipei, 1984 to 1987 (Managing Partner); Associate: San Francisco, 1982 to 1984; Caracas, Venezuela, 1980 to 1982; Chicago, 1979 to 1980. Member of Firm’s Policy Committee (1993 to 1996); Member of Firm’s Professional Development Committee (1988 to 1992). Engaged in multinational corporate legal work and U.S. customs matters. Practice involved rendering advice on the laws of foreign jurisdictions relevant to transnational commercial investment and financial transactions which encompass the following substantive areas: foreign investment, technology transfers and licensing, labor law, tax, antitrust, financing and banking, customs, secured transactions, corporate, joint ventures, exchange controls and distributorships (particular focus on Asia and Latin America). Firm Related Positions: Member of Baker & McKenzie Policy Committee, 1992 to 1996; Member of Baker & McKenzie North American Regional Council, 1988 to 1992; Member of Professional Development Committee, 1988-1992; Member of Baker & McKenzie Quality Audit Team, 1995 to 1996.
In 1993 he was Adjunct Professor of Law at Moscow International University. Other assignments have included trial attorney, United States Department of Justice, Civil Division, New York, New York, 1976-79. Hired under Attorney General’s Honors Program. Full litigation responsibility: pleadings, motions, depositions, discovery, trials and appellate argument in field of international trade and commercial law. Major responsibility in several antidumping actions and American Selling Price cases. Extensive experience with classifications and valuation matters in U.S. customs law. Significant contact with the Department of Treasury and the International Trade Commission. Attorney General’s Trial Advocacy Institute, 1978. From 19745-1976 he was a Law Clerk for The Honorable David T. Lewis, then Chief Judge, Tenth Circuit, United States Court of Appeals, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Thomas Berg grew up in Chicago and received a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University, an M.A. in philosophy and politics from Oxford University, and both an M.A. in religious studies and a J.D. from the University of Chicago, all with honors. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. While in law school, Berg served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and won the Beale and Bustin prizes for legal writing and student scholarship. He also served as musical director for three law-student musical comedy shows.
After clerking for Judge Alvin Rubin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Berg practiced law in Chicago with Mayer, Brown and Platt. In addition to handling general commercial litigation, Berg specialized in writing briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals, and also handled a range of legal matters for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and other religious institutions.
Before joining the St. Thomas faculty, Berg taught for 10 years at Samford University’s Cumberland Law School. In addition to teaching constitutional law, law and religion, intellectual property, civil procedure, and federal courts, Berg is one of the leading scholars of law and religion in the United States. He has written approximately 50 book chapters and journal articles, and dozens of op-eds and shorter pieces, on religious freedom, constitutional law, and the role of religion in law, politics and society. Berg is the author of The State and Religion in a Nutshell (now in a second edition), part of West Publishing Company's leading series of law books; and he is co-author with Michael McConnell and John Garvey of Religion and the Constitution, a casebook published by Aspen Publishing (third edition).
At St. Thomas, Berg has served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and as co-director of the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy. He has written more than 30 briefs on issues of religious liberty and free speech in cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts and has often testified to Congress in support of legislation protecting religious freedom. For this work, he received the Religious Liberty Defender of the Year Award from the Christian Legal Society in 1996. He has also received the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award (2004) from the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, for the Religion and the Constitution casebook, and the John Courtney Murray Award from DePaul University College of Law for scholarly and other contributions to church-state studies.
Berg has also been a visiting professor at the University of Aix-Marseille (Aix-en-Provence, France) and the University of Siena (Italy). He has made numerous presentations to academic, professional, religious, and community groups, including the annual conventions of the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools. He is a regular contributor to Mirror of Justice, a weblog on Catholic legal theory. He is past chair of the Law and Religion Section of the Association of American Law Schools; a member of the European-American Consortium on Church-State Relations; and a member of national boards or advisory committees for the National Council of Churches, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the DePaul University Center for Church-State Studies, and the Democrats for Life of America.
As Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, Elizabeth Clark has co-organized and taken part in dozens of conferences and academic projects with other scholars and with government leaders from around the world. She has from the beginning played a major role in organizing the Annual International Law and Religion Symposium at Brigham Young University. She has taken part in drafting commentaries and legal analyses of pending legislation and developments affecting religious freedom, and has assisted in drafting amicus briefs on international religious freedom issues for the U.S. Supreme Court. Before joining the Center, Professor Clark was an associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Mayer, Brown & Platt, where she was a member of the Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Group. Professor Clark also clerked for Judge J. Clifford Wallace on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Clark graduated summa cum laude from the BYU Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the BYU Law Review. Drawing on her multilingual talents in Russian, Czech, German and French, Professor Clark has been active in writing and lecturing on church-state and comparative law topics. She has taught classes on Comparative Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, International Human Rights, and European Union law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University. She has published numerous articles and chapters on church-state issues and has been an associate editor of three major books: Facilitating Freedom of Religion and Belief and two books on law and religion in post-Communist Europe. Professor Clark has also testified before Congress on religious freedom issues.
Gary Doxey, former Managing Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, rejoined Center in 2009 after three years of service as president of the Mexico City South Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In April 2011 Professor Doxey was called as an Area Seventy of the Church. Before joining the law school, Professor Doxey served under Utah Governor Olene S. Walker as chief of staff – the state’s top appointed official, head of the cabinet, and chief operating officer of the executive branch. Prior to that, he served six years as general counsel to Utah Governor Michael O. Leavitt. Professor Doxey has spent much of his career in Utah state government, serving as deputy commissioner of financial institutions and as associate general counsel to the Utah Legislature. He is also a professor of history at Brigham Young University and has taught at the University of Utah. He spent his early legal career as a commercial law practitioner and was a judicial clerk for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Utah. He has a PhD from Cambridge University and a JD from BYU. He speaks or reads several languages and is the author of many scholarly publications. In January 2011 he was named chair of the Center’s Development Committee.
Mr. Durham has advised a wide range of clients, including some of the nation's largest private foundations; large museums, hospitals, and high-technology nonprofits; a variety of newly formed organizations; and donors wishing to structure their gifts to maximize tax savings. He has particular experience advising 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations on running high-profile advocacy campaigns, and has also advised 527 organizations and PACs on federal tax issues. His second major area of focus is international grantmaking and the taxation of cross-border donations, both under U.S. domestic law and under country-specific treaties. Mr. Durham also has considerable experience in the rules governing private foundations, private operating foundations, supporting organizations, and donor-advised funds, as well as tax-exempt bond issues and unrelated business activities of exempt organizations.
In addition to advising clients in these areas, Mr. Durham has represented large charities before the IRS on audit, seeking initial recognition of exempt status, and in specific ruling requests. He has also represented clients before Treasury and Congress with regard to new or pending law and regulations.
Professor Cole Durham has been Director of Brigham Young University Law School's International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS) since its official launch on January 1, 2000. He was named President of the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ICLARS, Milan) on September 2011, succeeding Professor Silvio Ferrari. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was a Note Editor of the Harvard Law Review and Managing Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal, Professor Durham has been heavily involved in comparative law scholarship, with a special emphasis on comparative constitutional law. From 1989 to 1994, he served as the Secretary of the American Society of Comparative Law, and he is also an Associate Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law in Paris, where he was awarded the honorary designation of University Professor in 1999. Since 1994, he has also been a Recurring Visiting Professor of Law at Central European University in Budapest, where he teaches comparative constitutional law to students from throughout Eastern Europe, and increasingly from Asia and Africa as well. He has also been a guest professor in Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany and at the University of Vienna. In January, 2009, he was awarded the International First Freedom Award by the First Freedom Center in Richmond, Virginia, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Ovidius University in Constanţa, Romania in June, 2013. Professor Durham served from 1997-2013 as a member of the Advisory Council on Freedom of Religion or Belief of the OSCE’s Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. He has provided technical assistance on constitutions and laws dealing with freedom of religion or belief in approximately 50 countries worldwide. He has organized a series of conferences on comparative law issues at Brigham Young University and at other institutions in the United States over the past 20 years which have brought about 900 scholars and experts dealing with comparative constitutional law themes from over 100 countries to the United States. He is author and editor of numerous books and law review articles dealing with religious liberty and other comparative law themes. He has participated in hearings before the U.S. Congress and European parliamentary bodies on a variety of issues relevant to freedom of religion. He is an Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion.
Alexander Dushku is a shareholder and member of the board of directors of the Salt Lake City law firm of Kirton McConkie. He graduated summa cum laude from Brigham Young University in 1990 and magna cum laude from the J. Reuben Clark law school at BYU in 1993. After law school, Alexander practiced law in California for two years and then clerked on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals for the Honorable Judge Daniel A. Manion. In 1996, following his clerkship, Alexander joined Kirton McConkie, where he is a member of the firm’s constitutional and appellate law section, specializing in appellate brief writing and critical law and motion practice. He has authored numerous briefs in important religious liberty cases before appellate courts across the United States, including in the United States Supreme Court, and has consulted with legislators and advocates across the country on religious liberty issues. Much of his legal work is for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in cases involving complex issues of First Amendment law. Alexander is past president of the Constitutional Law Section of the Utah State Bar and is listed as one of Utah’s "Legal Elite" by Utah Business Magazine and as a Mountain States Super Lawyer.
J. Clifton Fleming, Jr., Ernest L. Wilkinson Chair and professor of law, joined the BYU faculty in 1974. Fleming served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1986 to 1999 and as Associate Dean for Faculty and Curriculum from 1999 to 2004. He was appointed to the Wilkinson Chair in 1998. In 1985-86, he was Professor-in-Residence in the IRS Chief Counsel's Office in Washington, D.C.
Fleming’s academic and teaching career has spanned the globe. He has been a Fulbright visiting professor of law at the University of Nairobi, and a visiting professor at the University of Queensland, Central European University in Budapest, Murdoch University School of Law in Perth, and holder of a visiting scholar chair at the University of Florida’s law school. In 2011, he held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria.
Professor Fleming teaches courses on US and international tax law, European Union law, and public international law.
Frederick Mark Gedicks holds the Guy Anderson Chair, one of three endowed chairs at the J. Reuben Clark Law School. He has received multiple teaching awards and has held visiting appointments at the University of Denver, the European University Institute of Florence, the University of Milan, the University of Notre Dame, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Siena, and the University of Utah. He is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada and speaks fluent Italian. He has lectured in Italian at universities throughout northern Italy, including the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (at both its Milan and Piacenza campuses) and the Universities of Como, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Siena, and Turin. Professor Gedicks’s current research focuses on the effects of belief on American law and society, the Religion Clauses of the 1st Amendment, and the original meaning of the Due Process Clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments. He is widely published on law and religion, constitutional law, and constitutional interpretation, including articles or essays in the Boston College Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, Emory Law Journal, George Washington Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, Southern California Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. Among his recent publications are “Incorporation of the Establishment Clause Against the States: A Logical, Textual, and Historical Account,” Indiana Law Journal (forthcoming Winter 2013); “God of Our Fathers, Gods for Ourselves: Fundamentalism and Postmodern Belief,” 18 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 901-14 (2010); “Truth and Conseqences: Mitt Romney, Proposition 8, and Public Reason,” 61 Alabama Law Review 337-71(2009); and “An Originalist Defense of Substantive Due Process: Magna Carta, Higher-Law Constitutionalism, and the Fifth Amendment,” 58 Emory Law Journal 585-673 (2009). He has also published two books, Choosing the Dream: The Future of Religion in American Public Life (Greenwood Press, 1991) (with Roger Hendrix), and The Rhetoric of Church and State: A Critical Analysis of Religion Clause Jurisprudence (Duke University Press, 1995).
Luke Goodrich is Deputy General Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions. Luke represents religious organizations and individuals in a wide array of religious liberty disputes at both the trial and appellate level, including cases brought under the Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause, Free Speech Clause, and RLUIPA. In 2009, Luke was appointed a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Colorado to argue an Establishment Clause appeal on behalf of the Becket Fund and several states. In 2012, he helped win a unanimous Supreme Court victory in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, which the Wall Street Journal called one of "the most important religious liberty cases in a half century." He has also argued appeals in the Third, Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits. Luke appears frequently in the national news media to discuss religious liberty issues, including appearances on CNN, Fox News, ABC World News, PBS, and NPR. Before joining the Becket Fund, Luke was an associate in the appellate practice at Winston & Strawn in Washington, D.C. There, he represented clients at all levels of state and federal courts in environmental, patent, bankruptcy, criminal, and constitutional cases. He drafted numerous Supreme Court petitions and briefs, and successfully argued a Third Circuit appeal, overturning a state murder conviction and life sentence on constitutional grounds. From 2005-06, Luke served as an international legal and research advisor at the U.S. Department of State, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Before that, he clerked for Judge Michael W. McConnell on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Luke received his B.A. in Philosophy, summa cum laude, from Wheaton College. He graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with high honors, where he was a member of the University of Chicago Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif.
After establishing and leading the widely acclaimed research on global religious restrictions at the Pew Research Center, Brian Grim will left the Center on 1 February 2014 to become the founding president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation. The Foundation educates the global business community about how religious freedom is good for business, and engages the business community in joining forces with government and non-government organizations in promoting respect for freedom of religion or belief. It envisions a future of innovative and sustainable economies where religious freedom and diversity are respected. The Foundation's work focuses on game-changing global initiatives in an increasingly religious world. In his work at Pew, employed his expertise on global religious restrictions and hostilities, as well as international religious demography in writing reports and providing information to policy makers, news organizations, and others interested in religion and world affairs. Before joining the Center in 2006, he worked as an educator, researcher and development coordinator in the former Soviet Union, China, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Grim received a doctorate in sociology from the Pennsylvania State University. He is an author of The Price of Freedom Denied (Cambridge Univ. Press), The World Religion Database (Brill), and The World’s Religions in Figures (Wiley-Blackwell), as well as Religion in China, The Future of the Global Muslim Population and the Pew Center's global restrictions on religion studies. Grim also has appeared as an expert on global religion on numerous media outlets, including CNN, BBC, Fox, CBS, C-SPAN, and regularly presents to high level audiences including the White House, State Department, European Parliament and the UN Human Rights Council. He also is a TEDx speaker.
David J. Hacker, Esq., has extensive experience litigating cases that protect the religious freedoms of Christians from government intrusion, especially on public university and college campuses across the nation. He serves as senior legal counsel and director of the University Project with Alliance Defending Freedom. He is also a sought-after speaker on religious freedom at elite law schools and high-profile academic conferences.
Since joining Alliance Defending Freedom in 2005, Hacker has focused on constitutional litigation and appeals at all levels of the federal courts and before state administrative bodies. He played a key role in DeJohn v. Temple University, one of the first cases at the federal appellate level to strike down a university speech code that violated the First Amendment, and College Republicans at San Francisco State University v. Reed, where he obtained an injunction against an unconstitutional California State University regulation that restricted speech on 23 campuses. Hacker also established a new precedent in Badger Catholic v. Walsh by securing a declaratory judgment against the University of Wisconsin System that invalidated its unconstitutional ban on prayer, worship, and evangelism. He has also argued before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Hacker has always been passionate about the intersection of law and religion. He believes religious freedom is the basic building block for a free society and must be legally protected from government infringement.
Prior to joining Alliance Defending Freedom, Hacker was an associate in the litigation department of Arnstein & Lehr LLP, where he litigated complex commercial, product liability, and employment cases in state and federal court.
Hacker completed the Alliance Defending Freedom development leadership program to become a Blackstone Fellow in 2002. While interning for the program at the Pacific Justice Institute, he was awarded the Brandt Gustavson award for demonstrating outstanding character, leadership, and exceptional work in religious freedom.
Hacker earned his J.D. in 2004 from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., where he was an editorial board articles and notes editor of the Washington University Journal of Law and Policy and published the law review article, “Warning! Evolution Lies Within: Preserving Academic Freedom in the Classroom with Secular Evolution Disclaimers.” He was also president of the law school’s Christian Legal Society chapter and a founding board member of Law Students Pro Life. He received his B.A. in English and philosophy at Northwestern University in 2001.
Hacker has been featured in numerous media publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Journal Science.
Hacker is a member of the bar in Illinois and California. He is also admitted to practice at the U.S. Supreme Court; the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, and 9th Circuits; and the U.S. District Court for the Central, Eastern, and Northern Districts of California, Central and Northern Districts of Illinois, and the Western District of Wisconsin. He is married to Heather Gebelin Hacker, a fellow Alliance Defending Freedom attorney.
Alan Hurst is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor for the Yale Law and Policy Review and participated in the university's "Faith and Globalization" seminar. Since law school, he has focused his research on the ways religious groups interact with outside society. In a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale Divinity School's Center for Faith and Culture, he wrote case studies for the Yale School of Management on businesses that have been influenced by their religious backgrounds. Afterward, he spent a year at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, where his work included a briefing for congressional staffers on religious freedom issues in the health care industry, a chapter of a book on religious freedom in Turkey, and an amicus brief before the Indiana Supreme Court arguing that the religion clauses of the Indiana Constitution did not prohibit the state's private school voucher program.
Mr. Isaacson is a member of the International section at the law firm Kirton McConkie in Salt Lake City, Utah. He advises domestic and foreign businesses and not-for-profit organizations regarding all aspects of international trade and business, with specific emphasis in Latin America. Mr. Isaacson previously served as International Legal Counsel for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, supervising all of the church's legal work in South America. As part of this position, he managed international real estate acquisitions and construction, complex litigation and international arbitration, international tax compliance for not-for-profit organizations, government relations, and legal implementation of new programs.
On a regular basis, Mr. Isaacson makes presentations at international seminars held in countries such as Chile, Argentina, and Mexico about legal matters related to non-profit and religious organizations.
Mr. Isaacson is recognized as one of Utah's Legal Elite in international law.
EXPERIENCE
From 1998 through 2004, served as International Legal Counsel, Office of General Counsel, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, supervising all Church legal work in South America; managed international real estate acquisitions and construction, managed complex litigation and international arbitration, international tax compliance for not-for-profit organizations, managed government relations, legal implementation of new programs.
1989 to 1998, King & Isaacson, P.C., Salt Lake City, Utah.
1985-1989, Davis Graham & Stubbs, Salt Lake City, Utah
1981-1985, Davis Graham & Stubbs, Denver, Colorado
Michael L. Jensen, an International Fellow of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies is at present Area Legal Counsel, Office of General Counsel, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Frankfurt, Germany. He served from 2007-2009 as Area Legal Counsel in Hong Kong, and from 2001-2005 in the same role in Moscow, in which capacities he supervised corporate, tax, employment, real estate and construction, litigation, government relations, religious liberty and related legal issues for the Church in 26 countries in Asia and in 16 countries in Eastern Europe, respectively. Intermittent with these assignments he has been a member Of Counsel of the International Law Section and Employment Law Section of the law firm Kirton & McConkie, with a practice focusing on international law for not-for-profit organizations and on advising employers on all aspects of the employment relationship. Previous to his assignments for the Church, Mr. Jensen was associate then partner in the firm Luce Forward, San Diego, California, a member of their Labor and Employment Law Practice Group, and Practice Group Chair, specializing in all aspects of employment law and litigation in state and federal courts, including individual and class discrimination and wage litigation, wrongful termination litigation, collective bargaining, and general employment counseling and training. He was before this an associate in the firm O'Melveny & Myers, Los Angeles, California, and Law Clerk to the Honorable Eugene A. Wright, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Seattle, Washington. A graduate cum laude of Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Mr. Jensen received his law degree, cum laude, from J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he was Articles Editor of the law review and research assistant to Associate Dean E. Gordon Gee. He is admitted to practice in Utah, California, and Washington, and before the Supreme Court of the United States.
David Kirkham, PhD, JD, is a professor in the Department of Political Science, Brigham Young University. He came to the International Center for Law and Religion Studies in July 2007 from the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, where he served as Associate Dean and Professor of International Politics and Democratic Studies. Dr. Kirkham has also been an Associate Professor of History, Director of International History, and Director of International Plans and Programs at the United States Air Force Academy. He also conducted international negotiations and diplomatic activities for several years for the US Government and United Nations, including as Senior Humanitarian Affairs Officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva (with duties primarily in Africa). He has lived fifteen years of his adult life in five European countries (Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France and Belgium) and officially represented the United States and the UN in more than forty nations on six continents. He began his career in the early 1980s with a five-year law practice for the US Air Force in England and in Washington, D.C. Dr. Kirkham's writing and teaching address international human rights, global democratization, constitutionalism, revolution, diplomacy, the United Nations, international humanitarian relief, and the global challenges posed by ideological extremism. Most recently he is co-editor of two books on Islam, law, and politics in Europe. He speaks French and German and holds a PhD from George Washington University and a Juris Doctorate from the J. Reuben Clark Law School.
Richard Moon is a Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Windsor. He has written extensively about freedom of expression and freedom of religion, publishing more than 50 articles and book chapters in Canada and abroad. He is also the author of Freedom of Conscience and Religion (Irwin Law, 2014) and The Constitutional Protection of Freedom of Expression (University of Toronto Press, 2000), editor of Law and Religious Pluralism in Canada (UBC Press, 2008), a contributing editor to Canadian Constitutional Law (Emond Montgomery Press, 2010), and co-editor of Religion and the Exercise of Public Authority (Hart Publications, forthcoming).
Professor Moore is a scholar of U.S. foreign relations law, international law, and international human rights. His publications appear in the Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, and UCLA law reviews, among others. Professor Moore has taught Civil Procedure, International Law, U.S. Foreign Relations Law, International Human Rights, and Legal Scholarship. In 2011, he received the Student Bar Association First Year Professor of the Year Award and the University's R. Wayne Hansen Teaching and Learning Fellowship. He is a member of the American Law Institute. After joining the BYU law faculty in 2008, Professor Moore taught as a visiting professor at the George Washington University Law School. Before joining BYU, Professor Moore clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. during the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 Term. From 2003 to 2007, Professor Moore was an assistant and then associate professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law. He arrived at the University of Kentucky after researching and teaching at the University of Chicago Law School as an Olin Fellow from 2001 to 2003. From 2000 to 2001, Professor Moore clerked for Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. From 1996 to 2000, he was an Honor Program trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Federal Programs Branch.
Steve Sandberg joined the Office of the General Counsel in 2006. Steve received a B.A. in English summa cum laude from Brigham Young University in 1999 and a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2003, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and a senior editor of the Columbia Law Review. After graduating from law school, Steve clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld in Fairbanks, Alaska. From 2004 through 2006, he worked as an associate with Morrison & Foerster, LLP in Irvine, California. He currently teaches as an adjunct professor at the J. Reuben Clark Law School. Steve is licensed to practice in California, Hawaii, and Utah.
Gene Schaerr specializes in winning civil appeals and writ proceedings, both in appellate courts and in the “pre-appeal” proceedings at the agency or trial-court level that often determine success or failure on appeal. He has argued and won dozens of cases in a variety of forums—including the U.S. Supreme Court (where he has argued six cases), every federal circuit court, and numerous state appellate courts. His win rate in the dozens of federal appeals he has argued in the past five years is over 75 percent. He was a coordinator of Sidley Austin’s appellate practice from 1993 until 2005, and from 2005 until 2014 was the chair of the appellate practice at Winston & Strawn—a practice he led to numerous recognitions in such publications as the “Appellate Hot List.” His personal practice successes have won him repeated recognition in such publications as Best Lawyers in Washington, D.C., Legal 500, D.C. Superlawyers, and Best Lawyers in America. He is also a Master of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, the only professional Inn devoted exclusively to appellate advocacy.
Substantively, Mr. Schaerr’s experience includes not only virtually every area of federal constitutional law, but also patent and trademark law, product liability and warranty law, environmental law, insurance coverage, class certification, contract law, arbitration, immigration, civil RICO, labor and employment, and tax. He has particular expertise in religious-freedom litigation, having represented numerous major religious bodies as well as religious colleges and universities. He has also represented either a party or an amicus in virtually every Supreme Court case involving religious freedom for the past 25 years.
Mr. Schaerr began practice as an appellate lawyer in 1987 following clerkships on the U.S. Supreme Court (for Chief Justice Warren Burger and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia) and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (for then-Judge Kenneth Starr), and in his early years of practice worked closely with former Solicitor General Rex E. Lee on a wide variety of Supreme Court and other appellate matters. He graduated in 1985 from the Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal on Regulation and Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. From 1991 to 1993, he served in the White House as Associate Counsel to the President, where he had responsibility for a wide range of constitutional and administrative-law issues, including those involving separation of powers, economic regulation, federalism and religious freedom.
Brett G. Scharffs is Associate Dean for Research and Academic Affairs of Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he is Francis R. Kirkham Professor of Law and Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies. His teaching and scholarly interests include comparative and international law and religion, jurisprudence and adjudication, and international business law. Professor Scharffs is a graduate of Georgetown University, where he received a BSBA in international business and an MA in philosophy. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a BPhil in philosophy. He received his JD from Yale Law School, where he was Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. Professor Scharffs was a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, and worked as a legal assistant at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague. Before teaching at BYU, he worked as an attorney for the New York law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell. He has previously taught at Yale University and the George Washington University Law School, and is a visiting professor each year at Central European University in Budapest. In his 16-year academic career, Professor Scharffs has written more than 50 articles and book chapters, and has made over 150 scholarship presentations in 20 countries. His casebook, Law and Religion: National, International, and Comparative Perspectives, co-written with his colleague, W. Cole Durham, Jr., was published by Aspen / WoltersKluwer in 2010, second edition in preparation.
As Managing Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, Robert Smith oversees activities including Center-sponsored conferences worldwide, the Annual International Law and Religion Symposium in Provo, academic publications, international law and religion initiatives, and law-reform consultations. Professor Smith is a co-author, with W. Cole Durham, Jr. and William Bassett, of the treatise Religious Organizations and the Law, published in annual updates by Thomson West. Professor Smith has also co-authored numerous articles on religious freedom and other legal topics, is a speaker at international conferences on religious topics, and teaches a course on the taxation of religious organizations at the J. Reuben Clark Law School. Before joining the law school, Professor Smith was Executive Vice-President and General Counsel to CaseData Corporation, a shareholder and chairman of the Corporate and Tax department at the law firm of Kirton & McConkie in Salt Lake City, member of law firms in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, Illinois, and a CPA for Deloitte & Touche. Professor Smith received a BS in accounting from BYU, an MBA magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame, and a JD magna cum laude from the J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he was named to the Order of the Coif and served as Editor-in-Chief of the law review.
Robert Snyder is an attorney at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Previous to his employment with the LDS Church, he was an associate attorney with the law firm of Kirton McConkie. He received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Brigham Young University and a Juris Doctor from the Boston University School of Law. He completed a Master of Laws in European Law at the Université Panthéon-Assas in Paris, France. Robert is actively engaged in the promotion and protection of religious freedom and serves as a member of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society’s Religious Freedom Subcommittee. He is a member of the American Society of International Law and a research advisor for the BYU Center for Law and Religious Studies. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the LDS International Society. He has authored several articles on the topics of human rights and religious freedom: Liberté Religieuse en Europe: Discussing the French Concealment Act; Is Religious Freedom Good for Business?: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis; and International Legal Regimes to Manage Indigenous Rights and Arctic Disputes from Climate Change. He is married with three children.
As Senior Editor at the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, DonlulThayer has responsibility for print and electronic publications, including the Center’s daily Law and Religion Headlines service. Donlu is a casenote editor for the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, and she provides editorial management for the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Law and Religion (Brill/Netherlands). Before joining the Center in 2009, Donlu had a long career as a teacher, writer, and freelance editor. She worked as an editor for BYU Press and was for many years an editor for the New World Archaeological Foundation. She was a Lecturer in the Brigham Young University Honors Program and English Department during 1970–2009, teaching composition, technical writing, creative writing, and thesis writing. Most recently, she created and taught the Honors Program course Advanced Writing for Pre-Law Students. At the time of her retirement in 2009 she received the JoAnn Britsch Teaching Excellence Award. Donlu attended Brigham Young University as a Karl G. Maeser Scholar, graduating in 1970 as co-valedictorian of the College of Humanities, magna cum laude, Honors Program High Honors with Distinction, with a double major in French and English, a University minor in German, and secondary teaching certification. She received a master’s degree in American Literature from BYU in 1972, and in 2004 she graduated from BYU Law School, where she received the Faculty Award for Meritorious Service, the J. Reuben Clark Public Interest Service Award, and the Schooley Outstanding Mediator Award and was Justice of the Cowley Chapter of Pi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity International. A certified mediator with specialized training in domestic mediation and high-risk victim offender dialogue, Donlu was for a brief time executive director of Community Dispute Resolution Services of Utah County. She is a member of the Utah State Bar.
Lynn D. Wardle is Bruce C. Hafen Professor of Law and an expert in family law. He has been President (2011-14) of the International Academy for the Study of the Jurisprudence of the Family. Wardle served as President of the International Society for Family Law (ISFL) from 2000-2002, currently serves on the ISFL Executive Council, and is a member of the American Law Institute. He has lectured, been a visiting professor, or made academic presentations about family law and family policy issues in more than twenty nations. He is coauthor of Fundamental Principles of Family Law (2002), and principal editor of a four-volume treatise, Contemporary Family Law: Principles, Policy, and practices (1988).
Wardle received his Bachelor’s degree from BYU in 1971. He is a 1974 cum laude graduate of Duke University Law School. Wardle was a clerk for US District Court Judge John Sirica. He has testified before legislative committees about many family policy issues including federal and state Defense of Marriage Acts and marriage amendments.
Professor Robin Fretwell Wilson, the Class of 1958 Law Alumni Professor of Law and the Law Alumni Faculty Fellow for 2011—2012, received her J.D. and B.A. degrees from the University of Virginia where, at the School of Law, she served on the Editorial Board of the Virginia Law Review. Before entering practice, she clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. A specialist in Family Law and Health Law, her research and teaching interests also include Insurance and Biomedical Ethics. Professor Wilson is the editor of four volumes: Health Law and Bioethics: Cases in Context (with Sandra Johnson, Joan Krause and Richard Savor, 2009); Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008) (with Douglas Laycock and Anthony A. Picarello); Reconceiving the Family: Critique on the American Law Institute's Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution (Cambridge University Press, 2006); and the Handbook of Children, Culture & Violence (Sage Publications, 2006) (with Nancy Dowd & Dorothy G. Singer). Her articles have appeared in the Cornell Law Review, the Emory Law Journal, the North Carolina Law Review, and the San Diego Law Review, as well as in numerous peer-reviewed journals. Named "Professor of the Year" by the Women Law Student Organization in 2008, Prof. Wilson has twice received the faculty award for outstanding scholarship. She is a member of the American Law Institute, and in 2010 was ranked among the Top 10 Family Law Scholars in the United States in Scholarly Impact. In 2010, Professor Wilson delivered the Sidney and Walter Siben Distinguished Professorship Lecture at Hofstra University School of Law and presented in the Distinguished Speaker Series at Saint Louis University's Center for Health Law Studies. Professor Wilson's work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio's All Things Considered, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, U.S. News and World Report, ABA Journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Chicago Tribune, CNN Headline News, Good Morning America, ABC News, CBS News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Essence Magazine among others. Professor Wilson is the past Chair of the Section on Family and Juvenile Law of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and of the AALS' Section on Law, Medicine & Healthcare. Professor Wilson has presented her research in China, Israel, Qatar, the Netherlands, Italy, England, Wales, Poland, Serbia, Japan, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, and France, as well as throughout the United States.