Berkley Center

Helen M. Alvaré is a professor of law at the George Mason University's Antonin Scalia School of Law, where she researches and writes about the intersection of law with marriage, parenting, non-marital households, and the First Amendment religion clauses. She previously worked in the Office of General Counsel and the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Michael Kessler is executive director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, a professor of the practice of moral and political theory in the Department of Government, and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law. Kessler’s research and writing focus on theology, philosophical and religious ethics, and social, political, and legal theory. He is interested in problems of law and religion, both globally and in the U.S. constitutional context. Kessler is the author of several edited volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Political Theology, co-edited with Shaun Casey (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Political Theology for a Plural Age (Oxford University Press, 2013); and Mystics: Presence and Aporia, co-edited with Christian Sheppard (University of Chicago Press, 2003). He also wrote “Engaging Religion in U.S. Foreign Affairs,” a chapter in the Companion to Religion and Politics in the United States (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). Kessler is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Martin S. Lederman is a Professor from Practice at the Georgetown University Law Center. He worked on issues related to religious liberty as deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010, and as an attorney advisor in OLC from 1994-2002. He is a regular contributor to several blogs and web sites, including Balkinization, SCOTUSblog, Opinio Juris, and Slate, writing principally on issues relating to separation of powers, war powers, torture, detention, interrogation, international law, treaties, executive branch lawyering, statutory interpretation, and the First Amendment.

Melissa Rogers is executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships under the Biden administration, a post she also held in the Obama administration. She previously served as a nonresident senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. Rogers is the author of Faith in American Public Life (2019).