In association with the BYU Family Law Society, the Ruth Institute is pleased to announce the speakers for the BYU Conference on the Family
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
Founder and President of the Ruth Institute
A committed career woman before having children, Dr. Morse earned a doctorate in economics, and spent fifteen years teaching at Yale University and George Mason University. In 1991, she and her husband adopted a two year old Romanian boy, and gave birth to a baby girl. She left her full-time university teaching post in 1996 to move with her family to California. She was a Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution,and at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. In the summer of 2008, Dr. Morse founded the Ruth Institute, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to bringing hope and encouragement for life-long married love.
William Duncan, J.D.*
Mr. Duncan is the director of the Marriage Law Foundation, a legal organization whose mission is providing legal resources in defense of marriage as the union of a husband and wife. He previously served as acting director of the Marriage Law Project at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law and a visiting professor at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School. He teaches family law to undergraduates at BYU as an adjunct professor. He has authored dozens of scholarly articles, book chapters and popular commentary on family issues. He has drafted pro-family legislation , submitted numerous legal briefs on behalf of pro-family groups, and has testified in front of legislative committees in a variety of states. Mr. Duncan is married to Catherine Allred Duncan and they are the home schooling parents of seven children.
Dr. Douglas Allen
Dr. Allen completed his B.A.(hons) and M.A. in economics at SFU, and then completed his Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 1988. His first job was as an assistant professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. Alas, the weather in Ottawa left the west coast family suffering, and when SFU offered him a job . . . his wife accepted. Dr. Allen has been witht eh department of Economics since 1990 and is now a Burnaby Mountain Professor of Economics. His research includes studying how exchange and production takes place in the context of “positive transaction costs.” This has led him to study the family, the farm, and history. Professor Allen is the author of two popular undergraduate microeconomic theory textbooks, and his work has generously been supported by SSHRCC and NSF over the years.
Dr. Donald Hilton
Dr. Hilton received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Lamar University (with highest honors) in 1983, and his medical degree at the University of Texas at Galveston (with honors) in 1988. He completed his training as a neurosurgeon at the University of Tennessee at Memphis in 1994, and was board certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery in 1997. He practices adult neurosurgery including cranial and spinal in San Antonio, Texas, is currently a clinical associate professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, and serves as director of neurosurgical training for the residency program at the Methodist Hospital rotation.
Lynn D. Wardle, J.D.*
Professor Wardle graduated from Brigham Young University (B.A., 1971) and Duke University School of Law (J.D., 1974). He clerked for U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica (DC, 1974-75, during Watergate cover-up trial), and practiced civil litigation (1975- 78) in Phoenix, Arizona. He has taught at Brigham Young University for 31 years. His major areas of teaching and scholarship are Family Law, Conflict of Laws, Biomedical Ethics & Law, and Origins of the U.S. Constitution. He has also taught as a visiting professor at Howard University School of Law (Washington, D.C.), at the University of Queensland Faculty of Law (Brisbane, Australia), at Sophia University Faculty of Law (Tokyo, Japan), been a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), and lectured in short-courses at universities in Beijing and Nanjing, China. Professor Wardle is the author or co-author of six books on the family, the editor or co-editor of seven books on the family and the author more than a hundred law review articles and chapters in scholarly and professional books.
* indicates a Ruth Institute Board Member