Gerald G. Ashdown is the James A. & June M. Harless Professor at the West Virginia University College of Law, where he teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Constitutional Law, and Federal Courts. Professor Ashdown has published widely on criminal law and freedom of the press, and is a co-author of Criminal Law: Cases and Comments (Foundation Press, 7th ed. 2003). He has been selected as a West Virginia University Foundation Outstanding Teacher and has served as a Reporter on the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Standards and as a drafter and consultant in the revision of West Virginia’s Criminal Code. Before joining WVU’s faculty, Professor Ashdown taught at the University of Iowa College of Law and the University of Kentucky School of Law. He earned his law degree from the University of Iowa, where he graduated Order of the Coif and with highest distinction.

Melody Barnes is the Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress, where she coordinates and helps to integrate all of the policy work from the Center’s policy departments, fellows, and network of outside policy experts. From December 1995 until March 2003, Ms. Barnes served as chief counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. In that capacity, she helped to shape legislation on religious liberties, civil rights, women’s health and reproductive rights, and commercial law. Ms. Barnes's experience also includes an appointment as Director of Legislative Affairs for the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and a position as Assistant Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. During her tenure with the Subcommittee, she worked closely with Members of Congress and their staffs to pass the Voting Rights Improvement Act of 1992. Ms. Barnes received her law degree from the University of Michigan and her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina, where she graduated with honors in history.

Robert M. Bastress, Jr. is the John W. Fisher, II Professor at West Virginia University College of Law. He teaches courses in Constitutional Law, First Amendment Law, West Virginia Constitutional Law, and Employment Discrimination, and his publications include The West Virginia Constitution (Greenwood Publishing 1995) and Interviewing, Counseling & Negotiating: Skills for Effective Representation (Little, Brown 1991) (with Joseph Harbaugh). Professor Bastress has been honored for his public service by the West Virginia State Bar, the West Virginia University College of Law, and the Mountain State Bar. He was recognized as a WVU Foundation Outstanding Teacher in 2002, and was named the Civil Libertarian of the Year in 1984 by the West Virginia Civil Liberties Union. Before joining the WVU faculty in 1978, Professor Bastress was a lecturer and fellow at Temple University. He has served as a supervising attorney in the Temple Legal Aid Office, a directing attorney at the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund, and a member of the National Board of Directors for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Kristi L. Bowman is a Visiting Professor of Law at The University of Mississippi School of Law. She teaches Education Law, Civil Rights, and Property. Her primary research interests lie at the intersections between constitutional law, civil rights, and educational policy, and she is currently writing about the legal and social issues surrounding the teaching of evolution, creationism, and intelligent design in public high schools. She is also a co-author of the forthcoming second edition of Power, Privilege and the Law: A Civil Rights Reader (West Publishing Group 2007). Professor Bowman is on leave this year from Drake University, where she is an Assistant Professor of Law. She will join the faculty of Michigan State University College of Law in the fall of 2007. Prior to teaching at Drake, Professor Bowman practiced law at Franczek Sullivan, P.C. in Chicago and served as a federal judicial clerk for the Honorable George G. Fagg, United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Lisa Brown is the Executive Director of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. Prior to joining ACS in 2003, Ms. Brown was an attorney with the civil rights firm Relman & Associates. From 1997 through 2001, Ms. Brown served as Deputy Counsel and then as Counsel to the Vice President of the United States. While Counsel, Ms. Brown advised the Vice President on legal matters, handled civil rights issues, and served on the Executive Board of the President's Committee for Employment of People with Disabilities. She also served as an Attorney Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice from 1996 until 1997. Prior to her government service, Ms. Brown was a partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm Shea & Gardner and did extensive pro bono work on issues including fair housing, disability discrimination, and homelessness. Ms. Brown holds a B.A. from Princeton and a J.D. from the University of Chicago, and was law clerk to the Honorable John C. Godbold on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Naomi R. Cahn is Associate Dean for Faculty Development and John Theodore Fey Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. Her areas of expertise include Family Law, Civil Trial Practice, Employment Discrimination, and Domestic and International Women’s Rights. She has written numerous law review articles on family law and other subjects, and has co-authored several books, including Contemporary Family Law (Thomson/West 2006), Families By Law: An Adoption Reader (NYU Press 2004), and Confinements: Fertility and Infertility in Contemporary Culture (Rutgers University Press 1997). From 2002 to 2004, Dean Cahn was on leave in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While there, she worked on public policy problems involving children accused of sorcery, sexual violence during war, and teenage sexuality. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington in 1993, Dean Cahn practiced with Hogan & Hartson in Washington, D.C., and as a staff attorney with Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services.

Angela C. Carmella is a Professor at Seton Hall University School of Law, where she teaches Property Law and seminars on law and religion. She has published extensively in scholarly journals on the law of church and state and on Catholic social thought, and is a co-editor of Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought (Yale University Press 2001). In 2004, Professor Carmella organized the first conference of legal scholars to address the complex issues raised when religious institutions file for bankruptcy. She was appointed visiting scholar and lecturer at Harvard Divinity School in 1995, and served as a Fellow of Harvard’s Center for the Study of Values in Public Life. Professor Carmella has been elected to the Catholic Commission on Intellectual and Cultural Affairs, and serves on the editorial council of the Journal of Church and State. Prior to joining the Seton Hall faculty, she practiced in the real estate department of a large Boston law firm. She earned both her law degree and a master’s degree in Theological Studies from Harvard University.

Daniel O. Conkle is the Robert H. McKinney Professor at Indiana University School of Law. A member of the faculty since 1983, Professor Conkle teaches Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, and Law and Religion. His research addresses constitutional law and theory, religious liberty, and the role of religion in American law, politics, and public life. He has published numerous articles, as well as a book entitled Constitutional Law: The Religion Clauses (Foundation Press 2003). Professor Conkle has been honored for his achievements both within and beyond the classroom. He is a recipient of the Leon H. Wallace Teaching Award and has twice won the Gavel Award for outstanding contribution to the graduating class. He has received six faculty fellowships for outstanding scholarship. In addition to his law school appointment, Professor Conkle serves as an adjunct professor of religious studies and a Nelson Poynter Scholar at the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions.

Charles R. DiSalvo is the Woodrow A. Potesta Professor at West Virginia University College of Law. His primary research interest has been the law of civil disobedience, with a particular interest in religious objections to war. He is currently finishing a book manuscript entitled Mohandas K. Gandhi: The Transformation of a South African Lawyer. He teaches Trial Advocacy, Civil Procedure, Civil Disobedience and the Law, and Bioethics and the Law. He is also the co-founder of the West Virginia Fund for Law in the Public Interest. Before joining the West Virginia faculty in 1979, Professor DiSalvo was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago and a Reginald Heber Smith Poverty Law Fellow working with the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky. He holds a law degree from the University of Southern California, a master’s degree from Claremont Graduate University, and a B.A. from St. John Fisher College.

Martha M. Ertman is currently Visiting Professor at the George Washington University Law School. She teaches contracts and commercial law, as well as a seminar on commodification theory. Her writing bridges contracts and intimate affiliation, suggesting ways that commercial models can improve family law as well as feminist and gay/lesbian legal theory. Recent publications include Rethinking Commodification: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture (with Joan Williams, NYU Press 2005). Current articles explore feminist perspectives on contract law and contractual perspectives on polygamy. Professor Ertman plans to join the University of Maryland law faculty in summer 2007, has taught at the University of Utah and the University of Denver, and has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Michigan, Connecticut, and Oregon. She attended Wellesley College and Northwestern University law school before practicing law in Denver and Seattle.

Carl H. Esbeck is R.B. Price Professor and Isabelle Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor of Law at the University of Missouri-Columbia. A widely published scholar on religious liberty and church-state relations, Professor Esbeck is recognized as the progenitor of “Charitable Choice,” an integral part of the 1996 Federal Welfare Reform Act which was later incorporated into three additional federal welfare programs. While on leave from Missouri-Columbia from 1999 to 2002, Professor Esbeck directed the Center for Law & Religious Freedom (CLRF) and then 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 Justice, he directed a task force to remove barriers to the equal-access of faith-based organizations to social service grants. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Religious Liberties Practice Group of the Federalist Society, and he serves as legal counsel to the Office of Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals.

John W. Fisher, II is Dean and Professor at the West Virginia University College of Law. He joined the WVU faculty in 1971, became Dean in 1998, and has been recognized by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals as “the state’s foremost authority” on West Virginia property law. Active in various law reform activities throughout his career, Dean Fisher was the Reporter for the West Virginia Law Institute’s project on Intestate Succession and Elective Shares and a Co-Reporter for the Civil Justice Reform Act Advisory Committee. He also helped to draft new Local Rules for Civil Practice for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. Dean Fisher received the Fred H. Caplan Civil Justice Award in 1998, was a recipient of the West Virginia University Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching in 1997, and was selected Professor of the Year by the College of Law’s 1996 graduating class. From 1977 to 1998, he served as a part-time magistrate for the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia.

Frederick M. Gedicks is Guy Anderson Chair and Professor at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, where he has taught a wide range of courses in constitutional law and theory, as well as courses on telecommunications law and corporate and securities law. He is the author of many articles on issues of church and state, as well as two books on that topic: The Rhetoric of Church and State: A Critical Analysis of Religion Clause Jurisprudence (Duke University Press 1995) and Choosing the Dream: The Future of Religion in American Public Life (with Roger Hendrix, Greenwood Press 1991). Professor Gedicks serves as faculty advisor to the BYU chapter of the American Constitution Society, and was honored with that chapter’s “Spirit of Brennan” Award in 2003. In 1996, he was awarded the John Stuart Mill Award for Excellence in Constitutional Studies by the BYU chapter of the Federalist Society. In addition to his work in the legal academy, Professor Gedicks is Of Counsel to the firm of Snow, Christensen & Martineau in Salt Lake City.

Steven G. Gey, the David and Deborah Fonvielle and Donald and Janet Hinkle Professor of Law at Florida State University, will deliver the Symposium’s featured address on April 13. The author of over thirty scholarly articles on religious liberties, free speech, and constitutional theory, Professor Gey is sole author of Cases and Materials on Religion and the State (LexisNexis, 2d ed. 2006) and a co-author of the forthcoming casebook, First Amendment: Cases And Theory (Aspen 2007). Professor Gey has received Florida State’s University Teaching Award and has been honored several times as its College of Law Professor of the Year. He also has been recognized with the Association of the Bar of the City of New York’s Thurgood Marshall Award for his pro bono representation of death row inmates. Before joining the Florida State faculty in 1985, Professor Gey practiced with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City. He received his J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, where he was Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review.

Steven K. Green is Professor of Law and Director of the new Center for Religion, Law, and Public Affairs at the Willamette University School of Law. He has written many articles on the doctrine, history, and theory of the Establishment Clause, and was awarded Willamette’s Robert L. Misner Award for Excellence in Scholarship in 2006. Before joining the Willamette faculty in 2001, Professor Green served for nine years as General Counsel and Director of Policy for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. In that role, he litigated many significant church-state cases (including several in the U.S. Supreme Court) and participated in the drafting of both federal and state religious liberty legislation. He currently serves on the Religious Liberty Committee of the National Council of Churches and served as Recorder for the Oregon Law Commission’s study of the Faith-Based Initiative in Oregon. In addition to a J.D. from the University of Texas, Professor Green holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in American Constitutional and Religious History from the University of North Carolina.

Kent Greenawalt is University Professor at Columbia Law School. His principal scholarly interests are constitutional law and jurisprudence, with special emphasis on church and state, freedom of speech, civil disobedience, and criminal responsibility. Before joining the Columbia faculty in 1965, he was law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan, and he subsequently spent part of a summer as an attorney with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in Jackson, Mississippi. He served as Deputy Solicitor General of the United States in 1971-72. Professor Greenawalt’s many books include Conflicts of Law and Morality (Oxford University Press 1987), Religious Convictions and Political Choice (Oxford 1988), Law and Objectivity (Oxford 1992); Private Consciences and Public Reasons (Oxford 1995), and Does God Belong in Public Schools? (Princeton University Press 2005). His most recent book is Religion and the Constitution, Volume I: Free Exercise and Fairness (Princeton University Press 2006), and he is currently working on a second volume examining the Establishment Clause.

Vivian E. Hamilton is an Associate Professor at the West Virginia University College of Law, where she teaches Civil Procedure, Family Law, and Advanced Family Law. Her scholarship centers on family law and marriage. Her most recent article, Principles of U.S. Family Law, was published in the Fordham Law Review. Prior to joining West Virginia’s faculty, Professor Hamilton directed the Women and the Law Clinic at American University’s Washington College of Law and clerked for the Hon. Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Professor Hamilton holds degrees from Yale College and Harvard Law School. At Harvard, she was Articles Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Professor Hamilton is on the boards of several non-profit organizations, including the West Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. She will join the faculty at William and Mary’s Marshall-Wythe School of Law in the fall.

Douglas Laycock, the Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, will deliver the Symposium’s keynote address on April 12. He has published many articles on religious liberty and other issues of constitutional law, as well as articles and two books on the law of remedies. Professor Laycock is an experienced appellate litigator on religious liberty issues, and has argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. He has also played a key role in developing state and federal religious liberty legislation. He has represented clients across the religious and political spectrum: the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Antonio and the National Association of Evangelicals, Hindus and Santerians, and the American Civil Liberties Union and parents objecting to school-sponsored prayers. Professor Laycock is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Council of the American Law Institute, and a graduate of Michigan State University and of The University of Chicago Law School. Before coming to Michigan, he taught at The University of Chicago and The University of Texas at Austin.

Anne Marie Lofaso is Associate Professor at the West Virginia University College of Law. Her scholarly interests include U.S. and comparative labor law and the interactions between religion, science, and law. Before coming to the College of Law, she served as a Senior Attorney for the Supreme Court and Appellate Court Branches of the National Labor Relations Board. Professor Lofaso earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Law at the University of Oxford on a Fulbright Scholarship, where her research focused on comparative labor law. She also has a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an A.B. from Harvard University, where she graduated magna cum laude in History and Science. Between law school and finishing her doctorate, she clerked for the Honorable James L. Oakes, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Ira “Chip” Lupu is the F. Elwood and Eleanor Davis Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School. He is a nationally recognized scholar in the constitutional law of church and state. Along with his colleague Robert Tuttle, Professor Lupu is the Co-Director of the Legal Tracking Project of the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government (State University of New York), which studies government partnerships with faith-based organizations in the delivery of social services. The Roundtable’s work is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Before joining the George Washington faculty in 1990, Professor Lupu taught at Boston University and was a visiting professor at Northeastern University and at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1989-90, he was the professor-in-residence on the Appellate Staff of the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Lupu received his A.B. from Cornell University and his J.D. from Harvard University, where he was a Case Editor on the Harvard Law Review.

William P. Marshall is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he teaches Media Law, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, First Amendment, Federal Courts, and The Law of the Presidency. He is also the Religion Clauses Issue Group Chair for the American Constitution Society. Professor Marshall has published widely on First Amendment issues concerning religion, speech, and the press, and also writes about additional matters including the separation of powers and the judicial confirmation process. His latest article, Break Up the Presidency?, was published in the Yale Law Journal in 2006. Prior to joining the North Carolina faculty in the spring of 2001, Professor Marshall served as Deputy White House Counsel and Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States during the Clinton Administration. He has taught at DePaul and Case Western, and has visited at William & Mary, Connecticut, Northwestern, and Boston University. Professor Marshall received his J.D. from the University of Chicago and his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Eduardo M. Peñalver is an Associate Professor at Cornell University Law School. His principal researches interests are property and land use, as well as law and religion. Along with Sonia Katyal, he is the author of Property Outlaws (forthcoming from Yale University Press). His law review articles have appeared in the Columbia Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Fordham Law Review, and the Ecology Law Quarterly. Before joining the Cornell faculty in 2006, Professor Peñalver taught at Fordham Law School, was a visitor at Harvard and Yale law schools, and practiced for two years with Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd & Evans, PLLC in Washington, D.C. Professor Peñalver holds a J.D. from Yale, an M.A. in Philosophy and Theology from Oxford, and a B.A. from Cornell. He clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court and for Judge Guido Calabresi on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Steven D. Smith is Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego. He has published widely in leading law reviews on law and religion, jurisprudence, and constitutional theory, including the Michigan Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Texas Law Review. He has also written several books, including Law’s Quandary (Harvard University Press 2004), Getting Over Equality: A Critical Diagnosis of Religious Freedom in America (NYU Press 2001), The Constitution and the Pride of Reason (Oxford University Press 1998), and Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press 1995). Prior to joining the San Diego faculty, Professor Smith held chaired professorships at the University of Notre Dame Law School and the University of Colorado School of Law. He holds a J.D. from Yale University and a B.A. from Brigham Young University.

John E. Taylor is an Associate Professor at the West Virginia University College of Law, where he teaches Religion and the Constitution, Torts, Education Law, Jurisprudence, and Professional Responsibility. His principal areas of research are law and religion and criminal procedure. Professor Taylor received the College of Law’s Significant Faculty Scholarship Award in 2006 for his article entitled Using Suppression Hearing Testimony to Prove Good Faith Under United States v. Leon. Before coming to the College of Law, Professor Taylor clerked for the Honorable M. Blane Michael on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He holds J.D. and A.B. degrees from the University of North Carolina and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Religious Studies from Stanford University. His doctoral dissertation was a comparative study of Kant’s and Aquinas’s accounts of emotion and virtuous action.

Robert W. Tuttle is Professor of Law and the David R. and Sherry Kirschner Berz Research Professor of Law and Religion at George Washington University Law School. His research and writing interests include law and religion, legal ethics, and moral philosophy. Along with his colleague Ira Lupu, Professor Tuttle is the Co-Director of the Legal Tracking Project of the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government (State University of New York), which studies government partnerships with faith-based organizations in the delivery of social services. The Roundtable’s work is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Professor Tuttle also serves as legal counsel to the Bishop of the Washington, D.C. Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He holds a law degree from George Washington, a Ph.D. in religious ethics from the University of Virginia, a master’s degree from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and a B.A. from the College of William & Mary.

Laura S. Underkuffler is the Arthur Larson Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke University Law School, where she has taught since 1990. She has published widely in the United States and abroad in the fields of property theory, the constitutional law of church and state, and the role of moral decision-making in law. In 2003, Professor Underkuffler received the Duke Bar Association's Distinguished Teacher Award and the Faculty Scholarship Award for her book, The Idea of Property: Its Meaning and Power (Oxford University Press 2003). A new book entitled Captured by Evil: The Idea of Corruption in Law, will be published later this year. Professor Underkuffler has been a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard, Georgetown, and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Maine. She has also been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a member of the Advisory Committee for the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. In 1991-92, she served as Special Counsel to United States Senator Paul Wellstone.