Regent University Law Review
Symposium
Participants
Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, Keynote Speaker
President, Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance
Dr. Carlson-Thies’s groundbreaking work in Washington D.C. and with organizations committed to protecting religious liberties will bring an experienced and practical policy perspective to the emerging issue of the clash between historic freedom of conscience and modern anti-discrimination laws. In 2008, he founded The Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance (IRFA), an organization which grew out of the work of the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom. IRFA seeks to safeguard the religious identity and faith-shaped standards and services of faith-based organizations.
Before founding IRFA, Dr. Carlson-Thies served as Director of Social Policy Studies at the Center for Public Justice (1992-2000, 2002-2008). He served in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2001 to 2002 where he assisted with writing Unlevel Playing Field: Barriers to Participation by Faith-Based and Community Organizations in Federal Social Service Programs, a report commissioned by President Bush to determine the necessary steps to expand social services using existing and emerging faith-based infrastructures. (August, 2001). In 2003, he created the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom, a multi-faith alliance of social-service, education, and religious freedom organizations that advocates to Congress, the administration, and the press for the preservation of the religious freedom of faith-based organizations.
In 2009-2010 Dr. Carlson-Thies served on the Task Force on Reforming the Office, a task force of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. This task force recommended to the Council how to clarify the church-state rules that apply to federal funding of private social-service providers and how to improve the operations of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and the 12 Centers for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships that are located in major federal departments. The recommendations of the task force have been incorporated into an Executive Order issued by President Obama (November, 2010).
He is a senior fellow with the Center for Public Justice, a US faith-based think tank, and with Cardus, a Canadian faith-based think tank. He recently served on the advisory committee for the Faith & Organizations project, which researched how faith communities work to maintain the faith identities of the nonprofit organizations they create.
Dr. Carlson-Thies was named as one of twelve advocates who are "reinterpreting God and country" by the National Journal in May, 2004, and received the William Bentley Ball, Life and Religious Liberty Defense Award from the Center for Law and Religious Freedom and the Christian Legal Society in October, 2004.
He holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Toronto. His dissertation is on the intersection of religion and political development in the Netherlands.
Dean Robert Vischer
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University of Saint Thomas School of Law
Rob Vischer serves as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at University of Saint Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His prolific scholarship explores the intersection of law, religion, and public policy, with a particular focus on the religious and moral dimensions of professional identity.
Dean Vischer recently published Conscience and the Common Good: Reclaiming the Space Between Person and State, a book which defines and defends the relational dimension of conscience and identifies ways in which our legal system can better maintain the communal venues in which the dictates of conscience are shaped, articulated, and lived out (Cambridge University Press 2010).His upcoming book, Love & Justice: Martin Luther King’s Lessons for Lawyers, pushes back against the individualist premises underlying our modern conception of the lawyer’s role by exploring Dr. King’s vision of “the beloved community.”
Dean Vischer’s scholarship has appeared in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Illinois Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Florida Law Review, Indiana Law Review, Stanford Journal of Law & Policy, Journal of Law & Religion, Legal Ethics, Journal of Catholic Social Thought, and Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, among others. He also writes for the magazine Commonweal and blogs regularly at Mirror of Justice and Legal Ethics Forum. He has served as a reviewer for the Journal of Law & Religion and the University of Chicago Press.
As a professor at Saint Thomas, Dean Vischer teaches Professional Responsibility, Torts, Family Law, Foundations of Justice, and The Religious Lawyer. He was voted Professor of the Year by the graduating class in 2008 and 2011, and he received the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2007. Dean Vischer came to St. Thomas from St. John's University Law School, where he was an Assistant Professor of Law and Fellow of the Vincentian Center for Church and Society. While at St. John's, Dean Vischer received the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching and was voted Professor of the Year by the student body.
Before beginning his academic career, Dean Vischer was associated with Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago, where he practiced corporate litigation. He clerked for three federal judges: Judge David Ebel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Joan Gottschall of the Northern District of Illinois, and Judge John Wiese of the Court of Federal Claims. He received his B.A. degree, summa cum laude, from the University of New Orleans, and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Francis J. Manion
Senior Counsel with the American Center for Law and Justice
Francis J. Manion is Senior Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington, D.C. based not for profit public interest legal organization specializing in First Amendment religious liberty issues.
Mr. Manion is a 1980 graduate of Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey and currently resides in Bardstown, Kentucky. Mr. Manion has litigated cases across the country involving the religious civil liberties of individuals whose conscience rights have been threatened in both the public and private sectors.
He has concentrated on litigating the issue of the protection of conscience rights of nurses, pharmacists and other health care workers who object to participating in medical procedures on ethical or religious grounds, including the following: Menges et al. v. Blagojevich et al., 451 F. Supp. 2d 992 (C. D. Ill. 2006) (Court holds pharmacists state Free Exercise and Title VII claims when challenging Governor’s Executive Order mandating dispensing of Plan B); Morr-Fitz, Inc. et al. v. Blagojevich, et al., 231 Ill. 2d 474, 901 N.E. 2d 373 (2008) (Illinois Supreme Court reverses lower court’s dismissal of claims by pharmacy owners that Governor’s Executive Order regarding Plan B violates federal and state laws); Vandersand v. Walmart Stores, Inc., 525 F. Supp. 2d (C.D. Ill. 2007) (Court holds pharmacist fired by Walmart for refusing to dispense morning-after pill states cognizable claims under state conscience law and Title VII); Muzzarelli et al. v. Walgreen Co., (Circuit Ct. Madison Cty. Ill. 2005) (Court affirms applicability of state conscience law to claims by four pharmacists alleging Walgreens violated Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act in firing them for refusing to dispense Plan B); Adamson v. Superior Ambulance, Case No. 1:04-cv-03247(U.S. Dist Ct. N.D. Ill. 2004) (EMT’s Title VII and state conscience law action against employer who fired her for objecting to transporting patient for non-emergency elective abortion); Moncivaiz v. DeKalb County, Illinois, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3997 (N.D. Illinois 2004) (Court holds part-time health department secretary denied full-time position due to position on abortion states cognizable claim under Title VII and state conscience law).
In addition, Mr. Manion has obtained favorable jury verdicts in several cases in the right of conscience area. See, Altman v. Minnesota Dept. of Corrections, 251 F.3d 1199 (8th Cir. 2001) (government employees had viable free speech and equal protection claims when they were disciplined for silent non-disruptive protest during diversity training class; at trial, jury awarded employees compensatory and punitive damages, court awarded Section 1988 fees); Phillips v. Collings, 256 F.3d 843 (8th Cir. 2001) (upholding jury verdict in favor of public employee discriminated against for requesting an accommodation of his religious beliefs regarding adoptions by same-sex couples; damages and Section 1988 fees awarded); Diaz v. Riverside County, Case No. 5:00-cv-00936 (U.S. Dist. Ct. Cent. Dist. Calif. 2002)(jury verdict for nurse terminated for refusing to dispense morning-after pill; damages and Section 1988 attorney’s fees awarded).
Jeffrey A. Shafer
Senior Legal Counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund
Jeffrey A. Shafer serves as senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization actively involved in right of conscience scholarship and litigation, at its Washington D.C. Regional Service Center.
Mr. Shafer brings to the panel the experience of a current right of conscience issues litigator in the education arena. Mr. Shafer currently represents Jennifer Keeton in a suit against Augusta State University. Miss Keeton was dismissed from the school’s counseling program for her Christian position on sexual ethics, and her refusal to promise to convey to clients a contrary message.
Mr. Shafer has litigated religious liberty and free speech cases in federal and state trial and appellate courts throughout the United States. Mr. Shafer has been practicing law since 1997 and is admitted to the bar in the states of Ohio and Illinois. He graduated with honors from the Regent University School of Law and joined ADF in 2005.
Thomas M. Messner
Visiting Fellow, The Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society
As a Visiting Fellow in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, Thomas M. Messner researches and writes about issues including religious liberty, right of conscience, nondiscrimination laws and the definition of marriage. His recent Heritage publications include "From Culture Wars to Conscience Wars: Emerging Threats to Conscience," and "Same-Sex Marriage and Threats to Religious Freedom: How Nondiscrimination Laws Factor In."
Mr. Messner earned his law degree from Notre Dame Law School and his bachelor of arts degree from Grove City College in Pennsylvania. After law school, he clerked for Judge William H. Pryor Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and practiced law in Washington, D.C. He is licensed to practice law in D.C. and Virginia.
