Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, II

Hearne joins the Thomas More Society as Special Counsel on election integrity. He is one of the nation’s preeminent political and election litigation attorneys. Some of the highlights of his election litigation practice include: Hearne was President Bush’s legal counsel in Missouri in 2000 (where he won the landmark case Bush-Cheney v. Baker which overturned a trial court’s order holding polls open beyond legal closing time). He was President Bush’s national election counsel in the 2004 presidential re-election campaign where he oversaw more than 75 different lawsuits in state and federal court, including appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, various state supreme courts and federal courts of appeal. Hearne is legal counsel to a number of state and federal officials, including governors, members of the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives and their campaign committees. Hearne represented the leadership of the U.S. House and Senate in their amicus brief in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court Crawford case also counsel for Democrat and Republican election officials in separate amicus brief in Crawford. Hearne is a nationally recognized authority in election law, was advisor to the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, has testified on election law matters before the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of representatives, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Hearne has written numerous articles on various topics of constitutional and election law and has appeared on NPR, CNN, Fox News and other national media and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and U.SA. Today. Mr. Hearne is also one of the nation’s preeminent political and election law attorneys. He served as President George W. Bush’s national election counsel in 2004, and as then-candidate George W. Bush’s lead counsel in Missouri in 2000 when he won the landmark case Bush-Cheney v. Baker. He was an advisor to the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election reform and has testified on election law matters before the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Mr. Hearne has written numerous articles on various topics of constitutional and election law, as well as Fifth Amendment Takings. Thor has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, several U.S. courts of appeals (including the Federal, Fourth, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuits), and the supreme courts of Florida, Michigan, Missouri, and Kansas. The Commonwealth of Virginia retained Thor to be Virginia’s lead trial and appellate counsel defending Virginia against a constitutional challenge to the commonwealth’s election laws. Thor and Virginia prevailed in both trial court and with a unanimous decision in favor of Virginia in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Thor has spoken internationally at property rights and property law. Thor addressed international property law and property rights conferences at Tsinghua University School of Law in Beijing China and the Universiteit Leiden at The Hague in the Netherlands. For almost a decade, Thor has served as a faculty member on the American Law Institute Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference.