The following 74 minute lecture was hosted by the UM Law chapter of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, a national network of legal scholars that examines the balance between the rights and powers of the federal government and the individual states. This lecture was presented at the University of Montana School of Law on March 21, 2006.
Dr. Dreisbach is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. He received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1985 from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a Juris Doctor degree in 1988 from the University of Virginia. Following law school, he served as a judicial clerk for Circuit Judge Robert F. Chapman of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and for two years he practiced public interest law specializing in civil and religious liberties. Dreisbach is author of Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State (New York University Press, 2002) and Real Threat and Mere Shadow: Religious Liberty and the First Amendment (Crossway Books, 1987). He is co-editor of and contributor to The Sacred Rights of Conscience (Liberty Fund, forthcoming) , The Founders on God and Government (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), Religion and Political Culture in Jefferson’s Virginia (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), and Religion and Politics in the Early Republic: Jasper Adams and the Church-State Debate (University Press of Kentucky, 1996), which was recently cited in the U.S. Supreme Court case Van Orden v. Perry. He has published numerous book chapters and articles in scholarly journals, including American Journal of Legal History, Baylor Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, Emory Law Journal, Journal of Church and State, North Carolina Law Review, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, and William and Mary Quarterly.
