Berkley Center

Thomas C. Berg is the James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy and directs students in the Religious Liberty Appellate Clinic at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota. He is a religious freedom scholar whose numerous publications include approximately 60 briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts.

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.

Asma T. Uddin is currently an expert advisor on religious liberty to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Inclusive America Project Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and senior scholar at the Freedom Forum Institute. She is also a Berkley Center research fellow. A graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, Uddin subsequently served as counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty; director of strategy for the Center for Islam and Religious Freedom in Washington, DC; and as a fellow with the Initiative on Security and Religious Freedom at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations. In addition to her expertise in religious liberty, Uddin writes and speaks on gender and Islam, and she is the founding editor-in-chief of altmuslimah.com. She can be reached at asmauddin@gmail.com.

Robin Fretwell Wilson is the director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs for University of Illinois System, as well as the Roger and Stephany Joslin Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. Wilson co-directs the College of Law’s Family Law and Policy Program and the Epstein Health Law and Policy Program. She specializes in family law and health law; her interests also include biomedical ethics, law and religion, children and violence, and law and science.