Stephanie Barclay

Stephanie Barclay is the Director of Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative, which promotes freedom of religion or belief for all people through advocacy, student formation, and scholarship. Prior to joining the Notre Dame faculty, Barclay was an Associate Professor of Law at BYU Law, where she was twice voted Professor of the Year. Before becoming a professor, Barclay litigated First Amendment cases in D.C., where she represented many clients at both the trial and appellate level, including before the U.S. Supreme Court. Barclay has also served as a law clerk to Judge N. Randy Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and to Justice Neil M. Gorsuch of the U.S. Supreme Court. Barclay is a Faculty Affiliate at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School; and a Nootbaar Fellow at the Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics at Pepperdine University. Her research focuses on the role our different democratic institutions play in protecting minority rights, particularly at the intersection of free speech and religious exercise. In 2011, she graduated summa cum laude from BYU Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif. Barclay is currently completing a Ph.D. in Law at Oxford University as a Clarendon Scholar and a Tang Scholar.