Pro Position

Josh McDaniel: Assistant Clinical Professor of Law

Josh is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Faculty Director of the School’s Religious Freedom Clinic, where he supervises students representing a diverse group of religious clients. His areas of interest include civil rights and liberties, constitutional law, and religious freedom and free exercise issues, especially as those issues concern religious minorities.

Josh is also an Associated Scholar with the Centre for Law and Religious Freedom at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.

Before entering clinical teaching, Josh was previously a trial litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson and an appellate litigator at Horvitz & Levy, where he specialized in representing individual and organizational clients in both commercial and civil rights cases, with particular expertise in First Amendment and religious freedom issues. He clerked for the Honorable Cormac J. Carney of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and the Honorable Jay S. Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

While in private practice, Josh received a Daily Journal 2022 California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year (CLAY) award, was twice named a “One to Watch” in appellate law by Best Lawyers, and argued in numerous appellate courts and courts of last resort, including twice before the California Supreme Court. His amicus brief for Jewish schools in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court was quoted by Justice Kavanaugh at oral argument.

Josh earned his B.A., magna cum laude, from Brigham Young University and graduated first in his class from UCLA School of Law.

Con Position

Lael Weinberger: Associate Attorney

Lael Weinberger is an associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He practices in the firm’s Litigation Department and with the Appellate and Constitutional Law and Administrative Law practice groups.

Before joining Gibson Dunn, Lael clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch on the United States Supreme Court, Judge Frank Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and Chief Justice Daniel Eismann on the Idaho Supreme Court. Lael also taught and researched at Harvard Law School as a lecturer, as the Olin-Searle-Smith Fellow, and as the Raoul Berger-Mark DeWolfe Howe Legal History Fellow. Lael earned a law degree with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School. He also holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago, with a focus on American legal history. Lael’s writings have appeared in many academic and popular publications, including the University of Chicago Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Newsweek, National Review, First Things, World, and the LA Review of Books.

Lael is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and California. He is a member of the bar of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. 

Moderator

Judge Paul B. Matey: United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Prior to judicial. service, Judge Matey was a partner at the law firm of Lowenstein Sandler LLP. He previously served as General Counsel at University Hospital Newark, Deputy Chief Counsel to Governor Chris Christie, and an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of New Jersey.