John Witte

Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, McDonald Distinguished Professor, Emory University
Faculty Director for Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University

Biography

John Witte Jr., JD (Harvard); Dr. Theol. h.c. (Heidelberg), is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, McDonald Distinguished Professor of Religion, and Faculty Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. A leading specialist in legal history, human rights, religious freedom, marriage and family law, and law and religion, he has published 300 plus articles, 18 journal symposia, and 45 books.

With $27 million of funding raised from the Pew, Ford, Lilly, Luce, and McDonald foundations and other benefactors, he has directed 20 major international projects on democracy, human rights, and religious liberty; on marriage, family, and children; and on law and religion – collectively involving 1600 scholars worldwide and yielding 380 new volumes and journal symposia. He is Series Editor of Emory Studies in Law and Religion(Eerdmans) and Cambridge Studies in Law and Christianity (Cambridge University Press), and he coedits the Journal of Law and Religion, Brill Research Perspectives on Law and Religion, and the new Colección Raíces del Derecho (Aranzadi). He has been selected twelve times by the Emory law students as the Most Outstanding Professor and has won dozens of other awards and prizes for his teaching and research.