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[iomhaigh]

I disagree with my friend Iomhaigh, you do not want to be placing telephone calls behind the back of your advisor.

Since you are so well liked go buy your advisor a cup of coffee and talk this over. Express your concern that you want the defense to go smoothly. Ask specifically about the ABD issue. Then if he reassures you that everything is going to be fine, accept that and defend.

Congratulations.

Larryc raises a good point here -- I approach these things this way because our graduate program's rules and regulations were horribly convoluted and making sure that everything that needed to happen actually did happen was our responsibility.  (Seriously, without multiple calls to the graduate school's main office to ask about forms, deadlines, getting things certified, etc., none of us would have ever graduated.) 

If this it not the ways things operate in your world, then the coffee approach might be a better idea. 

[seniorscholar]

I was graduate director in my department a few years ago, yet right now I haven't any idea about several picky points in protocol -- the rules for outside examiner's physical or telephone presence at the defense have changed; the paperwork has changed; and the day before the most recent defense I checked with the graduate secretary in the department, the administrative assistant in the graduate school Dean's office, the online graduate handbook, and the candidate himself, trying to figure out a small point in the paperwork we had to sign at the end of the defense.

The point here: do take responsibility for finding out the rules. If it turns out that the ABD's signature (whether it's in the "yes" column or the "no" column) will not satisfy the secretary in the graduate school, you'll have to do the whole darn thing over again.

And at my university, if anyone who is not graduate faculty (which means something different than "has taught a graduate class" -- here it means "is an actively publishing scholar," and the list is reviewed every two years) is to be on the defense, even if it's a big-name star in the field from another university as outside examiner, the c.v. and a statement from the candidate's supervisor explaining why this person is an appropriate examiner, have to be filed in the graduate dean's office 30 days before the defense.

And, like others, I simply can not imagine anyone without a PhD being on the examining committee (you gotta be one to lay on the hands that make one) with one exception: the person without PhD is very very experienced in some practical aspect of the work represented in the dissertation, and has the publications and credentials to demonstrate that.

[stanwyck]

I'm not sure I would be worried about an ABD on my committee--our rule is the following (copied from the Graduate Handbook):

"the committee must include at least four voting members, at least three of which must be members of the Graduate Faculty, and two of which must also be tenured."

I'm in a field (architecture) where it wouldn't be unusual to have a fourth member who did not have a Ph.D. Yes, Architecture is a bit different, in that big name theorists might only have an M.Arch., but I could see it happening in other design fields, too. 

A bitter ABD is one thing--a useful ABD is another.  I'm not sure it's a matter of "am I allowed to have this person on my committee," but more of "how do I get out of being allowed to have this person on my committee."