JOHN WITTE, JR. (JD Harvard) is Robert W. Woodruff University Professor, McDonald Distinguished Professor, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. A specialist in legal history, family law, human rights, and religious liberty, he has published 250 articles, 16 journal symposia, and 30 books – including recently The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (Cambridge University Press, 2007); Christianity and Law (Cambridge University Press, 2008); The Sins of the Fathers: The Law and Theology of Illegitimacy Reconsidered (Cambridge University Press, 2009); Christianity and Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2011); Religion and Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2012); No Establishment of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2012); From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (2d ed., Westminster John Knox Press, 2012); The Western Case for Monogamy over Polygamy (Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment (4th ed. Oxford University Press, 2016).
Professor Witte’s writings have appeared in sixteen languages, and he has delivered more than 350 major public lectures throughout North America, Europe, Israel, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Australia, and South Africa. With major funding from the Pew, Ford, Lilly, Luce, and McDonald foundations, he has directed 13 major international research projects on democracy, human rights, and religious liberty, and on marriage, family, and children. He edits two major book series, “Cambridge Studies in Law and Christianity,” and “Emory Studies in Law and Religion,” and coedits The Journal of Law and Religion. He has been selected twelve times by the Emory law students as the Most Outstanding Professor and has won scores of other awards and prizes for his teaching and research.
Professor Witte is married to Eliza Ellison, a theologian and mediator. They have two daughters and three grandchildren.
