Prof. Marci Hamilton

Marci A. Hamilton is the Fels Institute of Government Professor of Practice and Fox Family Pavilion Resident Senior Fellow in the Program for Research on Religion at the University of Pennsylvania, and the founder, CEO, and Legal Director of CHILD USA, a national nonprofit think tank dedicated to interdisciplinary, evidence-based research to prevent child abuse and neglect. She is the leading national expert on statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse, and her work underlies the Child Victims Act in New York and similar reforms across the country. She previously held the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she taught constitutional law and the First Amendment. She argued City of Boerne v. Flores before the Supreme Court, which held the Religious Freedom Restoration Act unconstitutional as applied to the states, and has represented victims in landmark clergy abuse litigation. She is the author of God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty and Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children, and clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Judge Edward R. Becker of the Third Circuit.