August 7, 2025, Washington, D.C. – The Religious Freedom Institute (RFI) is pleased to announce that Paul D. Clement, former U.S. Solicitor General and one of the nation’s top Supreme Court advocates, will serve as Keynote Speaker at our 2025 Annual Dinner on November 6. Following his remarks, RFI will present the Defender of Religious Freedom Award posthumously to the Honorable Kenneth W. Starr, his longtime mentor and dear friend.

“It is a great privilege to announce Paul Clement as our Keynote Speaker for this very special evening,” said RFI President David Trimble. “His deep friendship with Ken Starr, combined with his extraordinary record defending religious liberty before the Supreme Court, is a truly fitting tribute to a statesman who devoted his life to protecting this bedrock freedom for all people.” 

Clement, founding partner of Clement & Murphy, PLLC, served as the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008, following his service as Acting Solicitor General for nearly a year and Principal Deputy Solicitor General for more than three years.

He has argued more cases before the U.S. Supreme Court since 2000 than any other lawyer – including landmark religious liberty cases such as Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, and Kennedy v. Bremerton, among others.

Raised in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, Clement graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, earned an M.Phil. from Darwin College, Cambridge, and received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. After clerkships for Judge Laurence Silberman at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia at the U.S. Supreme Court, he served as Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism, and Property Rights.

In addition to his ongoing work in high stakes appellate litigation, he has also taught at Georgetown University Law Center as a Distinguished Lecturer since 1998 and serves as a Senior Fellow at its Supreme Court Institute, among his other positions and associations.

Clement deeply admired and worked closely with Judge Starr and said of him recently:

Ken Starr lived a remarkable life in the law… One of the through lines in his career was Ken’s commitment to religious liberty. I saw that commitment first hand in my first case with him – the Wisconsin school choice case – and in teaming up with him years later to defend the First Amendment rights of elementary school students. I am pleased to join RFI in celebrating Ken’s decades‑long commitment to upholding America’s extraordinary free exercise tradition.

The RFI Annual Dinner brings together leaders across law, church, civil society, and government to honor defenders of religious liberty. To learn more about RFI’s 2025 Annual Dinner, visit our event page.

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The Religious Freedom Institute (RFI) works to secure religious freedom for everyone, everywhere. RFI is a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, D.C.

Media Contact: Nathan Berkeley
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