Second-Best Free Exercise

UT Law alum Professor Christopher C. Lund (Wayne State University Law School) discusses his new article regarding why the Roberts Court’s new regime to protect the free exercise of religion is a second-best approach that risks leaving minority religions under-protected while not fixing the very problems the Court has long sought to avoid. He will also discuss the instability of free exercise doctrine and where we go from here.

Christopher C. Lund is a professor of law at Wayne State University Law School, where he teaches a variety of courses, including Torts, Contracts, Constitutional Law, Religious Liberty in the United States and Evidence. Excited to teach students, he has been voted Professor of the Year eight times. In 2022, Lund was named as the second associate dean for research and faculty development.

Lund’s scholarly interests vary, but his principal focus has been in the field of religious liberty. His academic work has been (or will be) published in student-edited law reviews, such as the Michigan Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, and the Northwestern University Law Review, peer-reviewed legal journals, such as the Journal of Law and Religion; and peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journals, such as History of Religions. Along with Michael McConnell and Thomas Berg, he is the author of a leading church-state casebook, Religion and the Constitution, the fifth edition of which was published by Aspen in 2022. In 2017, he was awarded the Berman Prize for Excellence in Scholarship by the Law and Religion Section of the American Association of Law Schools for his piece, Religion is Special Enough.