First Freedom Awards

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2009 INTERNATIONAL RECIPIENT

International - W. Cole Durham, Jr.

W. Cole Durham, Jr. is the Susan Young Gates University Professor of Law and Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School. He is a graduate of Harvard College (A.B. 1972) and the Law School at Harvard University (J.D. 1975). Cole has distinguished himself since joining the faculty of the Brigham Young University Law School in 1976 as a scholar of religious liberty and comparative law.  He was designated a Brigham Young University (BYU) professor in 1999 and in the following year appointed Director of the BYU International Center for Law and Religion Studies. Durham has been a guest professor at Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany and at the University of Vienna, and since 1994 has also been a Recurring Visiting Professor of Law at Central European University in Budapest.

Durham advises governments worldwide on laws dealing with religious freedom and religious associations, specifically on developing the legal infrastructure for the not-for-profit sector.  He has been actively involved in consultations on laws dealing with religious freedom and religious associations in Albania, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Peru, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and the Ukraine. 

Durham is an editor, contributor and author of many books and law review articles dealing with religious liberty. Cole was an editor for Religious Liberty in Western Thought (1996, Scholars Press), Law and Religion in Post-Communist Europe (2003, David Brown Book Company), Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Deskbook (2004, Brill Academic Publishers), and Religious Organizations in the United States: A Study of Identity, Liberty, and the Law (2006, Carolina Academic Press).

National - Douglas Laycock

Douglas Laycock is the Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He has a B.A. from Michigan State University (1970) and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School (1973). Laycock is one of the country’s leading authorities on the law of remedies and on the law of religious liberty, including such issues as conflicts between government regulation and religious practice, religious freedom restoration acts, religious speech by citizens and by government, and government funding of educational and social services delivered by religious organizations. He also studies the law of remedies, or what a court can do for a litigant who has been wronged. Laycock is a frequent expert witness before legislative committees and an experienced appellate litigator who has been involved in most of the Supreme Court's religious liberty cases over the past decade. He has testified many times before Congress about issues of religious liberty and has argued many cases in the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Laycock takes carefully nuanced positions that have led him to represent conservative religious organizations, secular civil liberties organizations, and many groups in-between, depending on the issue. Laycock is author of the leading casebook Modern American Remedies: Cases and Materials (3d ed. 2002, Aspen).  His monograph, The Death of the Irreparable Injury Rule (1991, Oxford) won the Scribes Award in 1991. Laycock is also the author of articles in Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Supreme Court Review, and elsewhere.

Virginia - Samuel Ericsson

Samuel Ericsson is President and CEO of Advocates International in Fairfax, Virginia. He is an immigrant from Sweden and a graduate of Harvard Law School.  Advocates International is a global law professional’s network, guided in its mission and methods by the Good Samaritan parable, promoting religious freedom and human rights, reconciliation and justice, ethics and the integration of faith and practice. By 2003, the Advocates International network linked over 30,000 law professionals in 135 nations, including in over 70 nations where religious freedom is tenuous. Advocates International’s staff and linked professionals help advocate religious freedom by offering legal services to persecuted believers, training and lawyers, judges and law schools, and help the most vulnerable populations receive care and support.  Ericsson has written widely on religious freedom and is the former editor-in-chief of the Religious Freedom Reporter.  Ericsson is co-author (with Lynn Buzzard) of The Battle for Religious Liberty (1992, D.C. Cook).  In 1995, Ericsson co-founded the Rule of Law Institute, a network of Christian professionals working to promote rule of law, human rights, religious liberty, justice and reconciliation.  He is currently Vice Chairman of its board of directors.  Ericsson also serves as the legal council for the World Evangelical Alliance’s Religious Liberty Commission, a group dedicated to promoting freedom of religion for all faiths, especially Protestant Christians, worldwide.  Ericsson is a signatory of the Williamsburg Charter, which reaffirms the Religion Clauses in the U.S. Bill of Rights.