William L. Saunders, Jr., J.D.

Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs

 

 William L. Saunders, Jr. is Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs at Americans United for Life (AUL). He oversees all of AUL’s legal work and is directly responsible for its international project. For the past decade, he served as Senior Fellow in Bioethics and Human Rights Counsel at the Family Research Council. 

 

Mr. Saunders attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead scholarship. He obtained his degree in law from the Harvard Law School. Mr. Saunders practiced law with the D.C. firm of Covington and Burling, and taught law at the Catholic University of America. He was featured in Harvard's first Guide to Conservative Public Interest Law in 2003, and again in the 2008 edition. He served on Harvard’s Advisory Committee for its 2008 celebration of public interest law. A member of the Supreme Court bar, he has authored numerous legal briefs in state, federal, foreign, and international courts.  

In addition to speaking and writing frequently on bioethics topics, Mr. Saunders has submitted testimony to the President's Council on Bioethics, as well as to UNESCO’s Committee on Bioethics, and has briefed Congressional staff, and testified in state legislatures. He is a regular columnist for the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.

 

Mr. Saunders has appeared often in the media, including BBC World News, CNN, Fox News, Vatican Radio, and National Public Radio. His articles on issues such as bioethics, human rights, international law, the family, and Christian social responsibility have appeared in a variety of journals, such as First Things, Human Events, Human Life Review, The Legal Times, Communio, The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy, Ethics & Medics, and Touchstone. Mr. Saunders is a contributing editor for Touchstone. 

 

Mr. Saunders’ articles and book chapters have been published by the university presses of Harvard, Villanova, BYU, Fordham, Georgetown, Houston, Scranton, and the Catholic University of America, as well as by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Freedom House, Greenhaven Press, Rowan & Littlefield, Praeger, St. Augustine’s, and Intervarsity press. He has given lectures and participated in debates at many colleges, universities, and law schools, including Princeton, Harvard, Georgetown, Colorado, South Carolina, Wake Forest, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, Cleveland Marshall, Cincinnati, Temple, Denver, Richmond, Indiana, San Diego, Catholic University, Malone, Texas Lutheran, Northwood, Central Florida, and Belmont Abbey. He delivered the annual J. Michael Miller Lecture at the University of St. Thomas (on international law) in February 2007, the annual R. Wayne Kraft Memorial Lecture (on bioethics) at DeSales University in February 2004 and the annual James Moore Lecture (on Sudan) at Millikin University in 1999. He has also lectured, and/or has been published, in many foreign countries, including Italy, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Mexico, Qatar, Malaysia, Romania, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom.  

 

Mr. Saunders served on the United States delegation to the UN Special Session on Children in 2001/02. In 2004, he served on the NGO Working Committee in connection with the Doha Intergovernmental Conference for the Family. He served on the organizing committee for the conferences of the World Congress of Families in Mexico City (2004), in Poland (2007), in Amsterdam (2009), and is a member of that organization’s Management Committee.

 

Mr. Saunders is Chairman of the Religious Liberties Group for the Federalist Society. He is Vice President of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and a member of the boards of the International Right to Life Federation, the International Association of Catholic Bioethicists, the Christian Institute on Disability, and the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. Mr. Saunders is a founding member of Do No Harm: the Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics. He is a Fellow of the Wilberforce Forum. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Law, Philosophy and Culture at the Catholic University of America.

  

In 1999, Mr. Saunders founded Sudan Relief and Rescue, Inc., to aid the persecuted church in Sudan. He has worked for and written on behalf of the persecuted church for many years.