Kevin Hasson | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Notre Dame Notre Dame Law School |
Known for | Founder and President Emeritus of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty |
Kevin J. "Seamus" Hasson is Founder and President Emeritus of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit, public interest law firm that represents persons of all faiths. The Becket Fund is well known for successfully representing the Little Sisters of the Poor in the U.S. Supreme Court. The firm also successfully represented Hobby Lobby in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, in which the Supreme Court held that protections under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act applied to closely held corporations. The Becket Fund also secured a victory in EEOC v. Hosanna Tabor, which the Wall Street Journal called one of "the most important religious liberty cases in half a century." [1]
Prior to his retirement, Hasson lectured and debated in a wide variety of venues, including The University of Oxford, the Vatican, Harvard Law School, and Stanford Law School. He holds honorary doctorates from several universities, including The Catholic University of America, Ave Maria University, and his alma mater, The University of Notre Dame. [2] Hasson currently serves as a trustee at the University of Dallas. [3]
Hasson has been quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and U.S. News & World Report, as well as in regional media outlets from the Los Angeles Times to the Chicago Tribune to the Philadelphia Inquirer. He has appeared on broadcast news programs including the Today Show, Dateline NBC, Fox & Friends, NPR, CNN, and Al-Jazeera. While serving as President of the Becket Fund, Hasson met with religious and world leaders across the globe, such as Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, and Elie Wiesel. [4]
Before founding the Becket Fund in 1994, Hasson was an attorney at Williams & Connolly in Washington D.C., where he focused on religious liberty litigation. From 1986 to 1987, he served in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department where he advised the White House and cabinet departments on church-state relations. In this position he worked under Samuel Alito. [5]
Hasson was involved in successfully arguing the right of the Catholic University of America to enact and enforce a Vatican ban on a professor from teaching theology. He also was a counsel for the Catholic Church in Abortion Rights Mobilization, Inc. v. United States Catholic Conference where he defended the right of the Catholic Church to maintain its tax exempt status while teaching and advocating its moral position on abortion. [6]
He is a 1985 magna cum laude graduate of the University of Notre Dame Law School, and also holds a master's degree in theology from Notre Dame. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Bible Literacy Project.
In 2011, the International Center for Law and Religion Studies and J. Reuben Clark Law School of Brigham Young University presented Hasson the International Religious Liberty Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the promotion and preservation of religious freedom. [7]
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), formerly the Alliance Defense Fund, is an American conservative Christian legal advocacy group that works to expand Christian religious liberties and practices within public schools and in government, outlaw abortion, and oppose LGBTQ rights. ADF is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, with branch offices in several locations including Washington, D.C., and New York. Its international subsidiary, Alliance Defending Freedom International, with headquarters in Vienna, Austria, operates in over 100 countries.
Liberty Counsel is a 501(c)(3) Christian ministry that engages in strategic litigation to promote evangelical Christian values. Liberty Counsel was founded in 1989 by its chairman Mathew Staver and its president Anita L. Staver, who are attorneys and married to each other. The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Liberty Counsel as an anti-LGBT hate group, a designation the group has disputed. The group is a Christian ministry.
Mary Ann Glendon is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a former United States Ambassador to the Holy See. She teaches and writes on bioethics, comparative constitutional law, property, and human rights in international law.
Robert Peter George is an American legal scholar, political philosopher, and public intellectual who serves as the sixth McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He lectures on constitutional interpretation, civil liberties, philosophy of law, and political philosophy.
Catholics for Choice (CFC) is a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. that advocates for the legalization of abortion, in dissent with the teachings of the Catholic Church. CFC is not affiliated with the Catholic Church. Formed in 1973 as Catholics for a Free Choice, the group gained notice after its 1984 advertisement in The New York Times challenging Church teachings on abortion led to Church disciplinary pressure against some of the priests and nuns who signed it. It has lobbied nationally and internationally for abortion rights goals and led an unsuccessful effort to downgrade the Holy See's status in the United Nations. CFC was led for 25 years by Frances Kissling and is currently led by its President Jamie L. Manson.
Notre Dame Law School is the law school of the University of Notre Dame. Established in 1869, it is the oldest continuously operating Catholic law school in the United States.
Becket, also known as the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, is a non-profit public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C., that describes its mission as "defending the freedom of religion of people of all faiths". Becket promotes accommodationism and is active in the judicial system, the media, and in education.
Jeannine Gramick, SL is an American Catholic religious sister and advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights. She is also a co-founder of New Ways Ministry.
Catholic Democrats is an American not-for-profit organization of Catholics to support the Democratic Party, based in Boston, United States. The Catholic Democrats have more than 60,000 members in all 50 American states and Puerto Rico. It claims no authorization from the Catholic Church, or any Catholic bishop, Catholic diocese, candidate or candidate committee.
Douglas William Kmiec is an American legal scholar, author, and former U.S. ambassador. He is the Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University School of Law. Kmiec came to prominence during the 2008 United States presidential election when, although a Republican, he endorsed Democrat Barack Obama. In July 2009, he was nominated by President Obama to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Malta. He was confirmed by the Senate and served for close to two years as ambassador to Malta. He resigned his post effective May 31, 2011.
The International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS), part of the J. Reuben Clark Law School (JRCLS) at Brigham Young University (BYU), was formally founded on January 1, 2000, to promote freedom of religion worldwide and to study the relations between governments and religious organizations. The ICLRS strives to be a global academic leader in the field of international religious freedom. The ICLRS was built upon the work of law professor Cole Durham, who was named its founding director. Brett Scharffs has been the ICLRS director since May 2016.
Margaret Ellen Traxler, SSND, was a prominent American Religious Sister with the School Sisters of Notre Dame and a prominent women's rights activist. She was also a leader in developing institutions to help poor women in the city of Chicago.
John Thomas Noonan Jr. was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Thomas John Joseph Paprocki is an American prelate of the Catholic Church who has been serving as bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois since 2010. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago in Illinois from 2003 to 2010.
Mark David Hall is a professor in Regent University's Robertson School of Government and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, an initiative of the First Liberty Institute. Mark is also Distinguished Scholar of Christianity & Public Life at George Fox University, a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, and a Senior Fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion. In 2022-2023, he was a Garwood Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s James Madison Program and a Visiting Scholar at the Mercatus Center.
"A Catholic Statement on Pluralism and Abortion", alternatively referred to by its pull quote "A Diversity of Opinions Regarding Abortion Exists Among Committed Catholics" or simply "The New York Times ad", was a full-page advertisement placed on October 7, 1984, in The New York Times by Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC). Its publication brought to a head the conflict between the Vatican and those American Catholics who were in favor of access to abortion. The publicity and controversy which followed its publication helped to make the CFFC an important element of the abortion-rights movement.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682 (2014), is a landmark decision in United States corporate law by the United States Supreme Court allowing privately held for-profit corporations to be exempt from a regulation that its owners religiously object to, if there is a less restrictive means of furthering the law's interest, according to the provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. It is the first time that the Court has recognized a for-profit corporation's claim of religious belief, but it is limited to privately held corporations. The decision does not address whether such corporations are protected by the free exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Hannah Clayson Smith is an American attorney with the firm Schaerr Jaffe. Smith is a senior fellow at the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University (BYU) and a member of the Board of Directors of the Religious Freedom Institute.
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is an American political scientist. He is the Tocqueville Professor in the Department of Political Science and Concurrent Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of two books on the principles of the American Founding focusing on religious liberty and the separation of church and state in the United States.
Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving ongoing conflicts between the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) over the ACA's contraceptive mandate. The ACA exempts nonprofit religious organizations from complying with the mandate, to which for-profit religious organizations objected.