Why Civil Rights Litigation Deserves Your Attention

Professor Joshua McDaniel is the director of Harvard’s Religious Freedom Clinic, where he and his students provide pro bono representation to members of minority faiths and vulnerable communities in the fight against discrimination and the defense of their constitutional and statutory rights. Professor McDaniel joins the Law Student Podcast team to discuss civil rights litigation, the value law students can derive from participating in clinics and pro bono work, and why civil litigation is a path each law student should consider. Hear what lawyers are doing today in this ever important segment of the law and how you can get involved in the fight for equality and justice.

• (00:00) - Why Civil Rights Litigation Matters to Law Students
• (01:57) - Introducing our Guest, Professor Joshua McDaniel
• (04:32) - What is Civil Rights Litigation
• (06:21) - Procedural Nuances in Civil Rights Litigation
• (08:16) - Section 1983 Explained
• (09:13) - Case Examples and Client Stories
• (11:37) - How to Develop Litigation Instincts Through Practical Experience
• (13:34) - Why It’s Important for Law Students to Consider Becoming Civil Rights Litigators
• (16:32) - The Emotional and Professional Challenges of the Field
• (18:05) - How to Stay Grounded and Balanced
• (19:37) - Advice for Aspiring Civil Rights Litigators
• (22:01) - What Life Looks Like for an Early Career Civil Rights Litigator
• (24:21) - The Importance of Mentorship
• (25:09) - Encouragement for Law Students
• (26:47) - Host Discussion

Creators and Guests

Host

Chay Rodriguez

Host

Enmanuel Fernandez

TB

Host

Todd Berger

Guest

Joshua C. McDaniel

Joshua McDaniel is an assistant clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School and the director of Harvard's Religious Freedom Clinic.

What is ABA Law Student Podcast?

Presented by the American Bar Association’s Law Student Division, the ABA Law Student Podcast covers issues that affect law students, law schools, and recent grads. From finals and graduation to the bar exam and finding a job, this show is your trusted resource for the next big step.

Todd Berger (00:00):
Civil rights litigation stands as a crucial pillar in our justice system, a mechanism to challenge discrimination and uphold the constitutional and statutory rights of individuals and groups from landmark cases, reshaping societal norms to everyday battles, ensuring equal access and protection. This area of law offers a powerful avenue for impact that for many law students may have helped inspire their drive to become lawyers. Today we dive into the vital role of civil rights litigation, explore some of the types of matters lawyers are addressing today, and uncover how aspiring legal minds can prepare to champion these crucial issues. This is the ABA Law Student Podcast.

Chay Rodriguez (00:54):
Hey everyone, this is Chay Rodriguez, and we are doing things a little different this episode because unfortunately Professor Todd cannot be with us, so I'm taking over. That was my evil laugh if you could hear it. I'm taking over. Manny, how are you? We're getting closer and closer to the end of the semester, so how are you feeling?

Manny Fernandez (01:15):
So I'm doing good. It's about that time. It's about that time in the semester where you start to freak out a little finals are coming and all that. I can't imagine what prepping for the bar is like though a little bit terrified. We were talking about that a little bit before we started recording. How are you doing? How's the bar treating you?

Chay Rodriguez (01:32):
Maybe that's my issue. I have not fully locked in yet, so check with me again. I know. Got to lock you. I know. Check with me again. Next episode. Listeners do as I say, not as I do, study, study, study. W-W-W-W-W, all the things, but Manny,

Manny Fernandez (01:50):
Well, it's a good thing Todd's not here to reprimand us on it, so that's fine.

Chay Rodriguez (01:55):
Exactly, exactly. Manny, I'm super excited to jump into this episode with you though because you interviewed Professor Joshua McDaniel and assistant clinical professor of law and director of the Religious Freedom Clinic at Harvard Law School. What was that like and why did you want to tap him to be on the show and share his insight with our listeners?

Manny Fernandez (02:19):
I think that our episode this time is, I'd like to call it a really wholesome episode. The subject matter to me is really touching as we like to do here. Often we're kind of tapping into a part of the law that we kind of feel doesn't get that much attention as much as it should. And kind of just bringing it to light for our listeners when it comes to civil rights litigation and maybe specifically the realm of religious freedom. There's a lot to be said, but not a lot to be heard is what I always like to say. Everyone seems to have an opinion, but nobody really often takes time to get into the nitty gritty of procedural nuance and what comes with this kind of litigation. It's I think a really fascinating topic and civil rights litigation as a whole is something that I wasn't really that aware of, and I certainly was not aware of the nuance that goes into it before I got into law school.

(03:13):
Everyone kind of goes into it, and if you're public service minded, people think about criminal law work and nobody really thinks that there is a lot of good to be done out there in the realm of civil rights litigation. And so to me, it's an interesting topic and it's also one that is really takes, it takes kind of like a mastery of the law in a very different type of way to understand all of the procedure and all of the statutory interpretation of it all that comes behind understanding section 1983 and understanding constitutional towards, so this is a really fun episode. I'm hoping that it'll be kind of just an introduction for many of our listeners into what this kind of law looks like and also not only why it's important, but also why it can be so fulfilling, which I think Professor McDaniel did a good job of showing us that he shared some of his stories and I really, really enjoyed that.

Chay Rodriguez (04:11):
He really did. This was a really good interview and I cannot wait until we talk about this a little more after our listeners are able to hear what Professor McDaniel has to say. So without further ado, let's jump into it and you will hear from us in a little bit.

Manny Fernandez (04:29):
Professor McDaniel, thank you for joining me. Really good to be here this semester. I'm taking a class that I have to say has probably been my favorite course in all of law school. I'm taking civil rights litigation. It's a topic that is near and dear to my heart and that has really picked my interest in a special way. So very quickly, could you give us, just to kick us off for some of the students and some of our listeners who haven't taken any classes like federal courts or any other classes on civil rights litigation or maybe haven't even encountered this topic, how would you describe the work that just generally falls under this umbrella?

Joshua McDaniel (05:05):
This is generally speaking, litigation of constitutional rights and other civil rights. It's actually more expansive than just constitutional rights alone, although that's a big piece of what a civil rights litigator will be litigating. So I guess the define civil rights, it's generally going to include the rights of individuals who receive equal treatment and not be discriminated against based on protected characteristics. So think race discrimination or sex discrimination or in the case of our clinic, religious discrimination, you can see it. So although it's civil rights litigation, you can see it either in a civil litigation context or a criminal litigation context in some situations, and it can be raised as a claim or a defense. So in my world of practice, you would see these cases brought primarily to seek protection under the First Amendment as well as a number of federal and state statutes or state constitutional provisions related to religious freedom, whether that be as a constitutional matter or within the workplace or under the various religious freedom statutes that the federal government and state governments have passed.

Manny Fernandez (06:21):
From my understanding, this world of litigation is often fraught with a lot of procedural nuances and complexities that really kind of doesn't exist in other parts of the law. Can you tell us a little bit about how civil rights litigation might differ from other fields that students might be more familiar with?

Joshua McDaniel (06:40):
In some ways, I would say civil rights litigation proceeds very much like regular litigation. So before I came to Harvard, I was an appellate litigator and had a more general civil practice. I did religious freedom cases, but I also did all kinds of other cases. So in some ways, if for example, you go to a summary judgment motion or you go to a jury trial, the procedures are going to be very similar. But like you point out, there are a lot of doctrines that come into play and in particular some types of concepts that you need to understand. I think one of the concepts that for a lot of my students that they need to grapple with early on is, for example, understanding that you don't just have a free standing right without a statute to sue under the constitution. So if the government violates your First Amendment rights, in theory, at least without a statute, you wouldn't be able to just go and sue the government for damages, for violation of your constitutional rights. We primarily rely on civil rights laws like Section 1983, if you've heard of that, as well as various other laws that have been passed and that are on the books. Another concept that I would just add on top of that is the understanding things like the difference between official capacity suing government officials in their official capacity suing government officials in their individual capacity. That's not really something that you deal with in other contexts so much, but is pretty important for understanding a civil rights claim.

Manny Fernandez (08:16):
And you touched on a lot of great stuff there, so let me allow me to pick through it a little bit. First off, can you explain to some of our listeners, again, who might not be familiar with this area of the law, what section 1983 is its origins and kind of where we stand now today with it?

Joshua McDaniel (08:33):
Yeah, so Section 1983 is a law that Congress passed to protect civil rights and to provide a private cause of action for anyone in particular who has experienced violations of their civil rights by state and local governments. So you could see this, for example, if there's a prisoner, a state prison institution, maybe the prisoner's rights of cruel and unusual punishment have been violated, and the prisoner could bring a section 1983 claim to sue the government, and you would need to be able to show that there's a violation of a constitutional right in order to do that.

Manny Fernandez (09:14):
Could you tell us a little bit about some of the kinds of interesting clients and cases that tend to come across the desk of a litigator like yourself within this practice?

Joshua McDaniel (09:24):
Yeah, happy to. I can speak to my experience litigating religious freedom cases in our clinic. We see a wide variety of what I think are fascinating cases to give just some examples of cases that we're currently litigating, we are representing the Old Order Amish out in Ohio. Ohio passed a law requiring all horse-drawn buggies to put an electric flashing light on top of the buggy, which as you can imagine for old Order Amish is problem kind of a non-starter for them. So we're representing YA Amish in that case, which has just been, I know for our students it's been a really fascinating experience encountering just a completely different way of life and religion and culture and going down to Ohio and meeting with these people and getting to know them and befriending them, and then also trying to find a way to tell their story in court and represent them effectively layered on top of all of that. As you can imagine, the communication difficulties that you would have when your client doesn't even use a phone.

Manny Fernandez (10:29):
Yeah, I can't even imagine the difficulties in your relationship with your client when they don't use technology.

Joshua McDaniel (10:37):
So it is certainly been something to navigate. But I guess to dive a little bit deeper into that case, as we began that case, we had to encounter all kinds of questions in terms of do we sue in federal court, do we sue in state court? What types of claims do we bring, whether they be constitutional claims or statutory claims? And we realized going to federal court, there were actually a number of abstention doctrines that whether it be younger abstention or ment abstention and others that we would've potentially encountered. And so we ultimately decided to pursue the case in state court and focus our case in the first instance on bringing an Ohio constitutional claim under Ohio's equivalent of the First Amendment essentially. And the case has been proceeding, but we got some initial relief from the court and are now proceeding towards a final hearing on a permanent injunction for a few months from now.

Manny Fernandez (11:37):
That is a very interesting case. I got to say. That also speaks to the importance of the instincts of a litigator. Knowing what the best avenue is to seek relief is an important thing, and it's the thing that's not taught in law school. In law school, you're given the tools, you're given the black letter law, you're taught to think like a lawyer, but litigation instincts are something that you, I don't know. Well, you can speak more about this. Is it something that you pick up with time? Is it something that's learned? What do you think?

Joshua McDaniel (12:07):
Yeah, I think that's part of the beauty of doing a clinic, whether it's a religious freedom clinic or any other type of clinic, the opportunities that you get to grapple with real world situations, real life clients, it's in a way a lot more chaotic than you would ever experience when you're doing the kind of simulated experience of LRW or something like moot court. You just learn so much and you're able to gain so much more judgment from those types of situations. And obviously you can start to learn this in the real world once you graduate and start encountering real life legal practice. But a clinic is a great way to get exposure to those types of complex situations while you're in law school and enabling you to graduate law school already, having dealt with some of those kinds of situations and developed some expertise and some judgment based on it,

Manny Fernandez (13:02):
As we know in the competitive world of the law and law school, anything that will get you out there ready as a practice ready attorney is definitely an advantage. As somebody who has done a clinic, I think I concur with your sentiment. It's completely different from just sitting in class and getting cold called. We'll be right back after this. I think this is a really good time to talk a little bit about in general why this matters on a fundamental level. Why do you think it's important that young lawyers consider this kind of work civil rights litigation?

Joshua McDaniel (13:49):
I think there's both a selfish reason why it matters and a selfless reason why it matters for the self-interested piece of it. Doing this kind of work is an incredible way to get really great experience early in your career depending on where you go. I remember when I went out to the large law firm in Los Angeles straight out of law school. It was a great law firm and worked on some really high profile cool cases, but I might be on a team of 20 lawyers for a given case, and the sliver of the case that I might be given would be pretty quite narrow, and I certainly wouldn't be the person that would be showing up to argue the case in court. But there's a lot of opportunities out there to take on pro bono matters. You could, for example, take on a pro bono appeal to a US court of appeals, and those can give you opportunities to essentially even as a very junior attorney, be the lead counsel on a case and to be able to write the briefs and counsel with your client and appear before the court and make the argument.

(15:02):
And not only that, but the court is usually pretty happy to have pro bono counsel come into a case because it takes a case that would otherwise be a case with one litigant being unrepresented and not able to raise arguments very effectively and actually bring somebody that can bring some legal expertise and a lot of passion and drive and time and research onto it. So that can be a really great thing if you're just looking for a way to do important work and advance yourself professionally. But I think regardless of what type of issue it is, the more selfless, and I think more important reason is that it allows you to use your law degree for something that is important and something that protects the rights that are most fundamental to everybody and that are really important to a thriving society. And there's a lot of legal work that can sometimes feel like you don't really get to put your soul into it very much. And this is very much something where I think anyone that does it and finds something that they're passionate about can really find it to be a meaningful experience where you can actually do something impactful and good.

Manny Fernandez (16:15):
It's probably something that people don't think about. Certainly this is extremely meaningful work and I think anybody can see that, but there is also great opportunity to become the best attorney you can be while at the same time being a part of cases that really mean the world to some people. But what about some of the tough parts? I know that these are cases that often go on for a pretty long time, they have long arcs and there's sometimes go on for years. Is that tough? Are there some dimensions of this work that really take the wind out of you?

Joshua McDaniel (16:49):
Yeah, I think that's certainly possible. And in terms of the long-term nature of cases, I guess I would say that that's something that is kind of inherent to many areas of law. Whenever litigation is concerned, the common denominator usually tends to be that it's protracted and it takes a while to get to the end point of the litigation, but it can certainly be emotionally draining, and particularly for the clients, it can be emotionally draining. We've had some clients that we've represented in the clinic that have felt enormous pressure to try to settle the case because it's just kind of an ongoing traumatic experience for them to kind of relive the discrimination that they experienced and to press forward with the litigation and thinking myself about what it takes to have the guts to pursue litigation. I don't think it's for the faint of heart to do something like that. And it can take a lot of patience. And to some extent I can say this from personal experience, and then I know my students have experienced this too, that it's not just emotionally draining for the client, but it can also be very much for the lawyer as well.

Manny Fernandez (18:06):
So I do want to ask, in cases like these with really high stakes and often really high public interest, is it possible to stay grounded while navigating these things that are very emotionally and sometimes even politically complex?

Joshua McDaniel (18:23):
And I think this is part of the, it's both part of the challenge, but also part of the reward and part of the beauty of doing this kind of work is the greater the struggle that you experience, the greater the happiness and the joy that you get on the back end of it is you are ultimately able to get a good result for the clients. And I think in terms of learning how to be grounded, it can be challenging. I think it's good to start to experience this even as a law student doing something like a clinic where you can try to, I think you never want to lose sight of the human element of a case. And so you don't want to let go of your emotions and your feelings as you're representing a client. And I think it's important to engage with your client on that level, but you also need to find a way to balance that against having some level of being able to look at the case from the outside and look at things objectively and to try to provide that objective advice to your client to help them to reach the best outcome that they can.

Manny Fernandez (19:35):
Absolutely. Maybe we can talk a little bit about the practical side and the day-to-day of this kind of work, because I think a lot of our listeners would probably benefit from that. We've talked about clinics, but is this a practice area where things like clerkships matter more than in others, or are there certain kinds of opportunities that a young lawyer or a student should pursue if this is the kind of practice that they hope to build? Do you think there's anything beyond clinics that would be really impactful and would really help you build a skillset?

Joshua McDaniel (20:09):
Yeah, beyond clinics, I think a clerkship is very helpful, although I generally view that clerkships I think are just generally helpful almost no matter what you do, but at the same time, it's important to realize why are clerkships helpful. I think the reason why clerkships are helpful is because what you should be looking for as a young lawyer is opportunities to be able to get really substantive work experience at an early stage where you actually get to write the legal arguments and you get to appear before, meet with the client and actually do the work of the lawyer the maximum extent possible, and at the same time do that under the tutelage or the mentorship of really fantastic lawyers who have an interest in mentoring you. So a clerkship is generally great because you check those boxes when you do a clerkship, you're going to be writing the bench memos, often writing the opinions, working really closely with the judge.

(21:09):
The judge is typically going to be a really great lawyer in their own rights and is going to have an interest in mentoring you as a junior lawyer. But at the same time, if you don't do a clerkship, I think you can find those types of things in other places as long as you're solving for that and as long as that's what you're pursuing. And in addition to that, I would just say looking for ways to kind of be engaged in doing pro bono work in public interest work wherever you are, whether that's diving headfirst into it and going to some kind of a public interest organization or becoming a clinician working in a law school clinic. But you can also do it if you're in private practice and you just do some take on some pro bono cases as part of your private practice, I think is also a great way to grow into it.

Manny Fernandez (22:02):
My next question would be, say I'm a young attorney or somebody fresh out of law school, I decide this is the kind of path I want to take. And I guess it's worth mentioning I'd probably be working very often the people who do this kind of work for nonprofits or private public interest firms or sometimes government roles. So what would the early career look like for me? What's the kind of stuff, you've talked about it a little bit earlier about what you did as an early career litigator in this space, but can you tell us a little bit about what my life would look like at that point?

Joshua McDaniel (22:38):
Yeah, so there's many different paths. My path was clerking and then going to a firm and increasingly taking on a larger and larger amount of pro bono work in this area where I was really interested and then eventually making the jump into full-time doing the religious freedom work in a clinical setting. But I think there are a lot of really great opportunities regardless of what type of public interest work it is working for some really fabulous organizations, and those can be great opportunities during law school. They can also be really great opportunities shortly after graduating law school, especially if you're solving for what I mentioned of being in a place where you can be on the front line and doing a lot of the work, but at the same time in a situation where you can learn from really great mentors. So I think that's also a great way to go.

(23:35):
And the clinical world is actually something that coming out of law school, it really wasn't on my radar, but I wish it had been sooner, realizing that a lot of clinics at various law schools have fellowships or instructor positions or staff attorney positions where you can go and work for a clinic even. And it's a really cool opportunity I think, to both be able to develop experience as a lawyer in this public interest space, but also to be in an academic setting where you're surrounded by law students, other professors, conferences, and opportunities to develop yourself from an academic perspective as well. So I would also put in a plug for that, that that's a great opportunity as well.

Manny Fernandez (24:21):
Another thing that I don't think nearly gets talked about enough within our field is just the importance of mentorship. I can point out several people who've been mentors for me who've had outsized impact on who I am today, not just in my career, but as a person. And I feel like this would be the kind of law that would be ripe with really great mentors and really great people with strong moral compasses. I think,

Joshua McDaniel (24:49):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true, that by attracting people that are interested in doing public interest work, there's a very strong correlation, I would say, between the people who are attracted to that and people who find a lot of joy in helping others to develop themselves and to grow professionally and to get opportunities.

Manny Fernandez (25:09):
So do you have any encouragement for students who probably didn't come to law school thinking that this is the kind of work that they do? Or what would you say to a student who might be curious about this field but not really sure if they're cut out for it?

Joshua McDaniel (25:23):
I would say use law school as an opportunity to get experiences in areas where to get those diverse experiences that it might not be what you're going to be doing your first year out of law school, but at least you've had that variety and you've had those opportunities to try your handout in different areas. What I can say is that when I went to law school, I had no idea that this was the path that I would be on. I didn't have any lawyers in my family, and so I didn't even know if I wanted to be a litigator or a transactional attorney, let alone what type of legal area I wanted to practice in. So for me, it was really just getting opportunities in different kinds of contexts, trying my hands at, whether it be securities litigation or appellate law, religious freedom law, or clinical work. So again, this is why I think taking advantage of things like externships and clinics and other experiential opportunities in law school I think is a really important thing to do. And then also just being open-minded that you don't have to have everything figured out as a law student and even A three L, it's okay to have the next few years planned out, but not really know what's going to happen after that and to just fill things out.

Todd Berger (26:39):
We'll be right back.

Chay Rodriguez (26:48):
Okay, Manny, that was a lot. And I kind of want to work backwards a little bit. Something that really stuck out to me towards the end of this interview when I want you to tell me if it impacted you the same was really the information about how you can jump in and do pro bono work and represent someone in the capacity of civil rights law, and it can just be so fulfilling to you. And that honestly, as I was listening to it, I was thinking about it because kind of how, as we alluded to before, I'm graduating, you guys know I like to say that a lot, but as I'm leaving, you do kind of think, well, what if I just don't want to do transactional work? What if I do want to be able to at some point in time, get in a courtroom and really use this degree in another capacity?

(27:37):
And I think Professor McDaniel really touched on that with how you can use pro bono work to represent someone who really needs you. He was just, oh my goodness, he was speaking to me and some of the issues that I've been having wrapping my head around the different ways that I could use this degree. But had I been someone who maybe has not taken part in a clinic yet, I would have been effectively influenced to go to my local careers office or student services offices and just asked about the possibility of me signing up to be a part of a clinic because he really sold that. It will help you to get out of the mind frame of just what's going on into a classroom and into a mind frame of this is what's going on in real life. Of course, without breaking any confidentiality in terms of being a part of a clinic, there has been times when I'm looking between my clinic supervisor who is also an attorney and the client, and I'm just like, are you hearing this?

(28:39):
This is not what they said in the Facebook. And this is for lack of legal jargon. Wild. Sometimes you guys, there's just not enough. There's not enough legal jargon to describe the scenario. This is wild. How are we going to tackle this? And I think he made an excellent point about saying that participating in a clinic will help you so that you know these real life cases and you're not shellshocked when you get into the real world, when you are the person handling the case, you are not thinking, wait, this isn't what I was taught in class. This is something else that's not in the case book. How did you feel about that kind of point of your conversation? Were you like, yes, I'm glad I have clinical experience?

Manny Fernandez (29:17):
Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah, you're so right. And I've been, exactly, it feels like maybe you and I were in the same room,

(29:25):
But it's exactly right. The legal world is not as sterile as a casebook, right? And even the craziest fact patterns in a casebook sometimes will not stack up against what in real life and the kind of things that lawyers need to do. And so there is, I think Professor McDaniel was totally right about this. There is an inherent value to doing clinical work and just getting out of the doctrinal nature of being lectured by a professor. Not that there's not value in that as well, but yeah, practical experience is so necessary, even if this isn't a field of law that you want to get into. But although I do say he made a great point of making sure to tell us that if this is the kind of law you want to get into, if you want to be a litigator, if you want to be there fighting to the death with people in court, clinical experience is almost necessary.

(30:23):
But even if that's not what you want to do, if this isn't the kind of law that you want to pursue, it's so valuable to be a practice ready attorney when you leave law school to step out there and you have at least a taste of what the real world, the quote real world is going to be like. Because really, I mean, also as young attorneys, we kind of have that responsibility going into it. You already got the odds stacked against you a little bit. Older attorneys kind of know that you don't know anything coming out of law school, and so it almost behooves you to really get the real life experience and be in a clinic. So he did a good job of selling that to me. I thought maybe something like clerking would be something that he would advocate for more, but he did make a good point that clerking just is good for everything.

(31:13):
But I do like how he kept going back to the clinic and even sharing his own experiences working at the clinic at Harvard. So yeah, that was certainly a huge thing. He also was very open about his own trajectory, which I felt was a good thing. Also, if you leave law school and you start doing one thing and then you do something else, that's a very common thing. I do want to remind our listeners, because we've all been there, I feel like I speak for both of us. There's sometimes when you're in law school where you feel like that job that you get right out of law school is going to be the job that you have to the grave, and you're trying to figure out what you want to do and people's opinions change. And when you go out there and you get a taste of that real world, then you, your objectives kind of change, and where you end up kind of changes.

Chay Rodriguez (32:12):
And that's something that I think that I really found to be amazing. When you're thinking about your objectives changing, your thoughts changing as an attorney, and then you give someone from the old Amish country to come to you and say, I need help with this. I don't necessarily subscribe to your ideals and the way that you live life, but I'm living in this and I need help. I think that in and of itself is a reality check in that, Hey, what I'm doing is helping, right? What I'm doing not only helps the regular average day person that I can see in the grocery store, but it also helps the person who feels like they don't live by this system and they don't have to, but then they get something in the mail that says, oh no, you're still under our jurisdiction. You still need to follow this. I thought that was amazing. What did you think about that part?

Manny Fernandez (33:09):
Isn't that crazy? I got to say, there is something just innately beautiful about, without going off the rails here too much. There's few things that have the potential to be as polarizing as religion, right? People with different religious beliefs are almost people who come from different planets, pretty much. And yet, in this context, in the context of Professor McDaniel's work in the context of this kind of law, it is so unifying, and it's such a beautiful thing to see people of different faiths, different beliefs who live their lives entirely by their faith in a sincerely held belief that what they worship is true. Coming together for the sake of religious freedom, of understanding that everybody has this right and so beautiful to see that something that can be so polarizing is instead so unifying. So that to me was extremely significant about this interview, and I think you could really see that in just how devoted Professor McDaniel is to his work. I mean, honestly, I think that was one of the biggest things for me, truly.

Chay Rodriguez (34:22):
Yeah, I mean, I got to tell you, hearing that, and of course we're working backwards, you guys, so we heard that early on in the interview, but hearing that it almost makes you pause because it brings you to a feeling of doing this work at times can be so pure. And when we talk about the framers and what they anticipated us having the freedoms to do when they wrote our constitution, I don't know. It made me a little fly on the wall when they were talking about freedom of religion, and it just took me to wow for them to see in the future that we would have a need for this. And then Professor McDaniel talking about this group of people who came to him for assistance or help to uphold that original ideal, I was like, wow, this is impactful, and I really enjoyed listening to you talk to him about it.

Todd Berger (35:20):
Thank you to Professor McDaniel for joining us today, and thanks to Manny for the interview, and Chay for stepping up in my absence this month. If you're looking for even more content curated just for you, head over to the ABA Law Student Division website and become a member. We want to make sure we're making the best content for you. Let us know what you'd like to learn more about by telling us in a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Finally, we'd like to thank our production partners at Moraine Media and to thank the ABA Law Student Division for making this show a reality. We'll be back next month with our next episode. See you then.