Emory Law School Website

John Witte Jr.

Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law; Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion

John Witte Jr. has lectured and convened major conferences throughout Western Europe, Israel, Japan, and South Africa. He has been selected ten times by the Emory law students as the Most Outstanding Professor and has won numerous other major awards for his teaching and research from universities and learned societies throughout North America and Europe.

Areas of Specialty: Legal History, Religious Liberty, Marriage Law, and Human Rights

Research and Scholarship: Witte has published 150 articles, 10 journal symposia, and 22 books and has five books under contract.  His writings have appeared in 10 languages.  He has lectured and convened conferences throughout North America, Western Europe, Israel, Japan, and South Africa. With more than $10 million of funding from the Ford, Luce, Lilly, McDonald, and Pew foundations, Witte has directed two dozen major projects on issues of democracy, human rights, and religious freedom; sex, marriage, family, and children; and Christian Jurisprudence. These projects have collectively yielded 150 volumes of new scholarship and more than 250 public forums. Witte also edits two book series for Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.: Emory University Studies in Law and Religion and the Religion, Marriage and Family Series.

Selected Recent Publications: Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 2002); Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment (2d ed. Westview Press, 2005); Sex, Marriage and Family Life in John Calvin’s Geneva (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005) (with R.M. Kingdon);  The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics and Human Nature (2 vols.) (Columbia University Press, 2006) (with F.S. Alexander); The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (Cambridge University Press, 2008); Christianity and Law: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2008) (with F.S. Alexander).

Education: BA, Calvin College, 1982; JD, Harvard University, 1985