Last page of the Union of Utrecht, 1579, Nationaal Archief (US-PD) This article is part of a forthcoming series on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning volume on The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn pointed to five major sources that helped drive the American revolutionaries…
The Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom: Human Rights in the United States and EuropeJohn Witte Jr. and Andrea Pin Material excerpted from The Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom: Human Rights in the United States and Europe by John Witte Jr. and Andrea Pin © 2025 by the University of Notre Dame. Excerpted with permission from…
What Might Make Life Better?: On Character Formation, Ethical Education, and the Communication of Values in Late Modern Pluralistic SocietiesJohn Witte, Jr. This essay is drawn from the fourth chapter of Michael Welker and John Witte, Jr.’s recently published book, What Might Make Life Better?: On Character Formation, Ethical Education, and the Communication of Values…
Law & Religion in a Secular Age by Rafael Domingo Review by John Witte, Jr. The following essay is a review of Rafael Domingo’s book, Law and Religion in a Secular Age, by John Witte, Jr. You can read an excerpt of Domingo’s book here on Canopy Forum. In some 35 books, 125 articles, and 250…
The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and LawJohn Witte, Jr. and Rafael Domingo This text is excerpted in part from the front matter of the Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Law, edited by John Witte, Jr. and Rafael Domingo (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023) and is used herein with permission. This hefty new volume, over…
Human Rights and Orthodox Christianity: Learning from our DifferencesJohn Witte, Jr. This essay was originally published on November 3, 2023 as a chapter in The Legal Thought of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, edited by Norman Doe and Dimitrios Nikiforos. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide, has thought profoundly about the…
The Blessings of Liberty: Human Rights and Religious Freedom in the Western Legal TraditionJohn Witte, Jr. The following is excerpted from John Witte, Jr.’s The Blessings of Liberty: Human Rights and Religious Freedom in the Western Legal Tradition, out now from Cambridge University Press. Read Nicholas Wolterstorff’s review of the book here. For the past…
The Polish Contribution to the Global Legal CultureJohn Witte, Jr. The following is excerpted from Law and Christianity in Poland: The Legacy of the Great Jurists, edited by Franciszek Longchamps de Bérier and Rafael Domingo and out now from Routledge. This volume is another signature title in the book series on “Great Christian Jurists in…
Celebrating the Scholarship of Michael J. Perry Forward by John Witte, Jr. The following text is an excerpt from the Emory Law Journal’s new Festschrift honoring the scholarly work of Michael J. Perry, who serves as Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory Law School and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law…
Religion and the American Constitutional Experimentby John Witte, Jr., Joel A. Nichols, and Richard W. Garnett Thomas Jefferson once described America’s new religious freedom guarantees as a “fair” and “novel experiment.” These guarantees, set out in the new state and federal constitutions of 1776 to 1791, defied the millennium-old assumptions inherited from Western Europe that…