Douglas Laycock doesn’t remember all the events surrounding his public high school’s 1963 Christmas assembly. Half a century of appellate litigation, writing and teaching will do that. But he does clearly remember hearing the Christian Nativity story from the Gospel of Luke. And he remembers walking out in protest.

Laycock, who retires from the University of Virginia School of Law in May as perhaps the nation’s preeminent expert on religious liberty — and one of its most effective advocates — said an outspoken atheist he was sitting next to helped him take the plunge.

“He said something like, ‘Let’s just leave,’ and I went with him,” Laycock recalled.

The Supreme Court’s big school prayer cases, Engel v. Vitale in 1962 and Abington School District v. Schempp in 1963 had just come down. Those and other Warren Court cases, along with Perry Mason’s television courtroom dramatics, left an impression on Laycock, who had grown up in Wood River, Illinois, a blue-collar oil refinery town. His father, who had contracted malaria after fighting at Guadalcanal in World War II, loaded petroleum products on barges on the Mississippi River.

“It was naive, but I thought I was going to argue cases in the Supreme Court and save the world,” Laycock said. “Well, 40 years later I did argue cases in the Supreme Court. I certainly didn’t save the world.”

Laycock’s briefs, oral arguments and frequent congressional testimony on behalf of religious groups have helped reinvigorate the free exercise clause and helped lay the groundwork for four federal statutes protecting religious liberty.

Read more at University of Virginia School of Law