Prescribing Religion: The Ten Commandments on Classroom Walls
Do laws requiring the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms violate the Establishment Clause? Professor Nathan Chapman (University of Georgia Law) joins us to analyze the constitutionality of state laws that require the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, arguing that many of them are best seen as prescribing particular religious beliefs and conduct, in violation of the Establishment Clause. Applying a historical understanding of an “Establishment of Religion” and considering the contexts of each mandated display, his paper concludes that several of these statutes are unconstitutional.
Lunch will be provided. Please register at the link.
Nathan S. Chapman writes and teaches about constitutional law, especially constitutional rights, and law and religion. Most recently, he is the author, with Michael W. McConnell, of Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Promotes Religious Pluralism and Protects Freedom of Conscience (OUP, 2023). Graduating classes have honored him twice with the C. Ronald Ellington Award for Excellence in Teaching (2018 and 2023) and the Lonnie C. Brown Award for Professionalism (2022 and 2023), and they have selected him twice to serve as a faculty marshal (2021 and 2023). Chapman also regularly teaches Law and Ethics of Lawyering and has served for nearly a decade on the Georgia Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism. He is a McDonald Distinguished Senior Fellow in Law and Religion (Emory Center for the Study of Law and Religion) and a Nootbaar Fellow in Law and Religion (Pepperdine School of Law). He is currently studying the conceptual and theological underpinnings of disestablishment of religion across the Anglophone world from 1776 to 1832. His scholarship on constitutional law has been cited in numerous U.S. Supreme Court opinions.
Chapman holds degrees from Duke University and Belmont University. He clerked for Judge Gerald B. Tjoflat of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, practiced at WilmerHale in Washington, D.C., and served as the executive director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.
He joined the University of Georgia School of Law faculty in 2013. He currently serves as the law school’s associate dean for faculty development and holds the Cleveland Distinguished Chair of Law.