Professor Nathan B. Oman Among 19 Mormon Scholars Who File Brief in State of Hawaii v. Trump
On April 20, 2017, a group of 19 scholars of law and religious history, including Professor Nathan B. Oman of William & Mary Law School, filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit attacking President Trump's executive order banning immigration from six Muslim nations. According to Professor Oman, the brief emphasizes the dangers of targeting immigrants on the basis of religion, telling the story of the federal government's campaign against Mormon immigrants in the 19th century and its unfortunate legacy.
Read the scholars' announcement concerning the brief. Read the brief (opens .pdf).
Read what Professor Oman had to say about the brief in interviews featured in the Huffington Post, CNN.com,the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News. The brief was also the subject of a story in the Washington Post.
Professor Oman studies Mormon legal history and originally drafted the brief. The California Appellate Law Group LLP represent the scholars before the Ninth Circuit.
Nathan B. Oman is the Rollins Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School. He graduated from Brigham Young University, where he was a Benson Scholar, and, prior to law school, worked on the staff of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Morris Shepard Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and worked as a litigation associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin, LLP. Professor Oman earned his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he served on the Articles Committee of the Harvard Law Review and as an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. His most recent scholarship includes The Dignity of Commerce: Markets and the Moral Foundations of Contract Law (University of Chicago Press 2017).About William & Mary Law School
Thomas Jefferson founded William & Mary Law School in 1779 to train leaders for the new nation. Now in its third century, America's oldest law school continues its historic mission of educating citizen lawyers who are prepared both to lead and to serve.