Preeta D. Bansal (File photo)

Washington - Leading constitutional lawyer Preeta D. Bansal was on June 30 elected Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the independent and bipartisan federal agency that advises the Bush administration and the U.S. Congress on the state of religious freedom around the world.

Bansal, who has served as Commissioner on the panel, succeeds Michael K. Young, outgoing dean of The George Washington University Law School who is now scheduled to take over as president of the University of Utah.

Commissioner Felice D. Gaer and Commissioner Nina Shea were elected Vice Chairs of the panel which details religious persecution around the world and sends its recommendations to President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and the U.S. Congress.

The election follows the Commission’s practice of alternating the post of Chair yearly between Democratic and Republican appointees. The Chair is chosen by the Commissioners themselves.

Commissioner Bansal is Of Counsel at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York City. She is a constitutional lawyer whose career has spanned government service, private law practice, and academia. She served as the Solicitor General of the State of New York from 1999 through 2001.

Prior to her appointment as New York Solicitor General, Bansal practiced appellate, constitutional and media law with private law firms in Washington, D.C. and New York City. She also served in the Clinton administration as Counselor in the U.S. Justice Department and as Special Counsel in the Office of the White House Counsel.

She has taught constitutional law and First Amendment law, and served as a public policy fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court and to Chief Judge James L. Oakes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Bansal is a magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard-Radcliffe College, and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where she was supervising editor of The Harvard Law Review.

Bansal was first chosen as Commissioner for a two-year term beginning May 15 last year and was appointed by Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, (D-SD)

Commissioner Gaer is the director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights of the American Jewish Committee. She is Vice Chair of the Committee Against Torture, an official United Nations treaty monitoring body that reviews governmental compliance with the Convention Against Torture. She is the first American to serve on the committee.

Commissioner Shea is the director of the Center for Religious Freedom of Freedom House in Washington, D.C. She has been an international human rights lawyer for 25 years and has for 18 years focused specifically on the issue of religious persecution.

Before her appointment to this Commission, on which she has served from the beginning, Shea served on the Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom to the U.S. Secretary of State.

Shea has organized and sponsored numerous fact-finding missions to countries such as Sudan, China, Egypt and elsewhere, and has testified regularly before Congress about the governments of these nations.

She is the author of ‘In the Lion’s Den,’ a book on anti-Christian persecution around the world, and writes frequently on the status of religious freedom in the world.

The Members