Hannah Clayson Smith gave the keynote address April 12 at our 2018 Symposium on Religious Liberty, which commemorated the 25th Anniversary of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Since 2007, Smith has been senior counsel at the Becket Fund, after two clerkships at the US Supreme Court for Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito, Jr. Since joining Becket, Hannah has been a member of the legal team that secured victories in crucial US Supreme Court religious-liberty cases including Holt v. Hobbs, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, and Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. Smith served as a full-time volunteer missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in France and Switzerland. She currently serves as a member of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society International Board and as a member of the Deseret News Editorial Advisory Board. She writes a regular column on religious liberty issues in the Deseret News.
Hannah received her BA from Princeton University, concentrating in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She graduated from Brigham Young University Law School and was elected to the Order of the Coif. She served as executive editor of the BYU Law Review, as a research assistant for the BYU International Center for Law and Religion Studies, and as president of the BYU Federalist Society. BYU awarded her its Alumni Achievement Award in 2013.
On October 16 and 17, Justice Jillani joined us for the 2017 CCS Fall Distinguished Lecture Series. This event was co-sponsored by Center for Constitutional Studies, UVUSA, Center for the Study of Ethics, and the History and Political Science Department. Justice Jillani spoke on "The Rule of Law and International Peace", and "Judicial Independence and the Supreme Court in Pakistan".
Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani served as the 21st Chief Justice of Pakistan from 2013 to 2104.He has been retired since summer 2014. Earlier in his career, he was nominated Justice of the Lahore High Court by Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1994. He served as a Justice of the Supreme Court from 2004 till the enforcement of the State of Emergency in 2007. This occurred due to his refusal to take a fresh oath of office. He was forcefully retired and detained from the Supreme Court. After the restoration of democracy in 2009 he rejoined the Supreme Court. Later in 2013 he acted as Chief Election Commissioner. Considered a progressive judge, Mr. Jillani was a strong advocate of civil liberties and fundamental rights, creating changes for women's rights and right to education.
He has been the recipient of many awards, such as Key of the City of Detroit; The Rule of Law Award (aka the CEELI Award) by the American Bar Association as one among a number of judges of Pakistan demonstrating courage in upholding the rule of law; and an Honorary Chair of the World Justice Project, sharing this honor with other co-chairs including, Honorable Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Honorable Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Honorable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Honorable Justice Stephen G. Breyer, President Jimmy Carter, Honorable Madeleine Albright, Honorable James A. Baker III and William H. Gates Sr.
On September 21st, we had the privilege of having Randy Barnett as our keynote speaker for our 2017 Constitution Week: Free Markets and the Constitution.
Randy E. Barnett teaches constitutional law and contracts, and is Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States' Attorney's Office in Chicago. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies and the Bradley Prize, he has been a visiting professor at Penn, Northwestern and Harvard Law School. Professor Barnett's publications incudes twelve books, more than one hundred articles and reviews, as well as numerous op-eds. His most recent book is Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People (HarperCollins, 2016).
His other books include: Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (Princeton, 2d ed. 2014); The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (Oxford, 2d ed 2014); A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (co-authored)(Palgrave, 2013); Contracts: Cases and Doctrine (Wolters Kluwer, 6th ed. 2017); Constitutional Law: Cases in Context (Wolters Kluwer, 2nd ed. 2013); The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Contracts (Oxford 2010).
In 2004, he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzalez v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2012, he was one of the lawyers representing the National Federation of Independent Business in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act. He appeared on PBS's Constitution USA with Peter Sagal; and he portrayed a prosecutor in the 2010 science-fiction feature film, InAlienable.
On April 6, we had the privilege of having Douglas Laycock as our keynote speaker for our 2017 Constitution Symposium on Religious Liberty. Douglas Laycock is the Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He has published many books and articles on religious liberty and other constitutional topics, and articles and two books on the law of remedies. His writings on religious liberty are forthcoming in a five-volume collection from Eerdmans Publishing. He represented churches and believers in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, City of Boerne v. Flores, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Church and School v. EEOC, and Holt v. Hobbs. He represented citizens opposing government-sponsored prayers in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe and Town of Greece v. Galloway. He played a key role in developing state and federal religious liberty legislation. As these examples illustrate, he is known for defending the liberty of all sides in America’s culture wars. He is a graduate of Michigan State University and the University of Chicago Law School, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Vice President of the American Law Institute.
