Headscarves and Holy Days: Should the Law Make Exceptions?

Leah Farish is a civil rights attorney in Tulsa, Oklahoma; an Allied Attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund; and an Affiliate Attorney with the Rutherford Institute. She holds a B.A. from Duke University, an M.A. from Vanderbilt University, and a J.D. from Baylor University Law School. For twenty years, she has practiced law and published in the area of First and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Her books include Lemon V. Kurtzman: The Religion and Public Funds Case (Landmark Supreme Court Cases) (Enslow, 2000) and The First Amendment: Freedom of Speech, Religion, and the Press (Enslow, 1998). Farish has taught law-related courses at universities around Oklahoma and has represented churches, protesters, schools, parents and students in various court cases. In 2005 she won American University's Mary Beth Tinker Award for her representation of a Muslim girl who wanted to wear a headscarf in her public school. Farish has also represented other Muslims in connection with First Amendment issues. Farish joined the Honor Guard of Alliance Defense Fund attorneys in 2004.

Marci Hamilton holds the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. She is an internationally recognized constitutional law scholar specializing in church/state relations, federalism, and representation; she frequently lectures in the United States, Europe, and Africa. Her most recent book is God vs. The Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge 2005). She often testifies before Congressional and state legislatures and is involved in appellate litigation addressing cutting-edge constitutional law issues. Hamilton is a First Amendment advisor for clergy abuse victims, including the consolidated cases in California and the federal bankruptcies of the Portland and Spokane Archdioceses. She was lead counsel for the City of Boerne, Texas, in the landmark Supreme Court case, Boerne v. Flores (1997), which invalidated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. She advises international officials on religious freedom issues and advocates for the responsibility of American religious organizations to the public good. Hamilton is founding director of Cardozo's Intellectual Property Law Program and a leading commentator on copyright issues as they relate to the First Amendment. She clerked for Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the US Supreme Court and Chief Judge Edward R. Becker of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Hamilton has visited at prestigious law and theology schools and writes on constitutional issues for www.findlaw.com.

Jytte Klausen is professor of comparative politics at Brandeis University and an affiliate at The Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Her most recent book is The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe (Oxford University Press 2005), which was also published in German translation with a Turkish translation forthcoming. Klausen is also the author of War and Welfare: Europe and the United States, 1945 to the Present (1998, 2001) and of numerous articles and chapters on the European welfare state and social cohesion. She co-edited Has Liberalism Failed Women? Assuring Equal Representation in Europe and the United States (2001) with Charles S. Maier, and European Integration in a Social and Historical Perspective, 1850 to the Present (1997) with Louise A. Tilly. Klausen was a British Academy Visiting Professor at Nuffield College, Oxford (2003) and a Bosch Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin (2004). She is currently working on a book about the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed and the protests against their publication, forthcoming from Yale University Press in fall 2007.