John Witte, Jr. is Woodruff University Professor, McDonald Distinguished Professor, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. A world-class scholar of legal history, human rights, and law and religion, he has published 300 articles and forty books. Recent works include The Western Case for the Monogamy Over Polygamy (Cambridge, 2015), Christianity and Family Law (Cambridge, 2017), and Church, State, and Family (Cambridge, 2021).
Preface and Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Christian contributions to
the development of rights and liberties in the Western legal tradition; 2.
Magna Cartas old and new: rights and liberties in the Anglo-American common
law; 3. Natural law and natural rights in the early Protestant tradition;
4. 'A most mild and equitable establishment of religion': religious freedom
in Massachusetts, 1780-1833; 5. Historical foundations and enduring
fundamentals of American religious freedom; 6. Balancing the guarantees of
no establishment and free exercise of religion in American education; 7.
Tax exemption of religious property: historical anomaly or valid
constitutional practice? 8. Faith in Strasbourg? Religious freedom in the
European Court of Human Rights; 9. Meet the new boss of religious freedom:
the new cases of the Court of Justice of the European Union; Concluding
reflections: toward a Christian defense of human rights and religious
freedom today; Index.
