Christopher Lund
Office: Room 3263
Telephone: (313) 577-4046
Fax: (313) 577-9016
E-mail: lund@wayne.edu
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J.D., University of Texas School of Law
B.A., Rice University
Christopher C. Lund is an associate professor of law at Wayne State University Law School, where he teaches a variety of courses, including Constitutional Law, Religious Liberty in the United States, Contracts, Torts, and Evidence. Excited to teach students, he has been voted Professor of the Year three times. Lund’s scholarly interests vary, but his principal focus has been in the field of religious liberty. His academic work has been published in law reviews including the Minnesota Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, and the North Carolina Law Review, peer-reviewed legal journals such as the Journal of Law and Religion, and peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journals, such as History of Religions.
Professor Lund has represented a wide variety of groups and causes. He has, for example, worked for the American Civil Liberties Union defending the rights of Christian parents to homeschool their children, and for a diverse coalition of religious groups supporting the freedom of Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay. He regularly advises church-state groups regarding litigated cases and pending legislation. He is a past chair of the Law and Religion Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and the current chair of the Section on New Law Professors.
Lund joined Wayne University Law School in 2009 from the Mississippi College School of Law. Before teaching, he clerked for the Hon. Karen Nelson Moore on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, served as the Madison Fellow at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and practiced law at Dechert LLP in Philadelphia. Lund received his J.D. with high honors from the University of Texas School of Law, and received his B.A. from Rice University, summa cum laude, with majors in mathematics and psychology.
During the fall semester of 2013, Professor Lund will be on leave from Wayne, teaching at the University of Notre Dame Law School.
“The New Free Exercise Clause,” 108 Northwestern University Law Review ___ (forthcoming 2014)
“The New Victims of the Old Anti-Catholicism,” 44 Connecticut Law Review 1001 (2012)
“The Future of the Establishment Clause in Context: A Response to Ledewitz,” 87 Chicago-Kent Law Review 767 (2012) (symposium)
"Salazar v. Buono and the Future of the Establishment Clause," 105 Northwestern University Law Review 1387 (2011)
"In Defense of the Ministerial Exception," 90 North Carolina Law Review 1 (2011)
"Religion, Prison, and the Constitution," 51 History of Religions 94 (2011) (reviewing Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Prison Religion: Faith Based Reform and the Constitution (2009))
"Legislative Prayer and the Secret Costs of Religious Endorsements," 94 Minnesota Law Review 972 (2010)
"Exploring Free Exercise Doctrine: Equal Liberty and Religious Exemptions," 77 Tennessee Law Review 351 (2010)
"Religious Liberty after Gonzales: A Look at State RFRAs," 55 South Dakota Law Review 466 (2010) (symposium)
"The Congressional Chaplaincies," 17 William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 1171 (2009)
- April 22, 2013
Christopher Lund was one of three guest panelists during a discussion titled "Public Prayer: Insiders, Outsiders, Pledges and Invocations," on April 15 in South Carolina. The panel discussion was part of the fifth annual Law & Society Symposium sponsored by the Charlestown Law Review of the Charlestown School of Law and the Riley Institute of Government, Politics and Public Leadership of Furman University, S.C. Keynote speaker was retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. - August 10, 2012
Christopher Lund presented a draft version of his forthcoming piece, "The New Free Exercise Clause," at a gathering of law and religion scholars at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago. - August 2, 2012
Christopher Lund gave presentations on three topics at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools annual conference in Florida. He discussed the history of the Establishment Clause on the panel "Engel v. Vitale at Fifty." He discussed the intersection of employment law and the First Amendment on the panel "The Far Reach of Disability Law: Its Impact in Multiple Federal and State Contexts." And he discussed teaching methods on the panel "Planning for Student Outcome Measurements: Discussion Group on Design Implementation and Ideas." - February 28, 2012
Christopher Lund traveled to Case Western Reserve University School of Law on Feb . 16 to present his paper, "Legislative Prayer and the Secret Costs of Religious Endorsements," http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1666237, published in the Minnesota Law Review. - February 28, 2012
Christopher Lund attended a conference on Feb. 23 titled "The Competing Claims of Law and Religion: Whom Should Influence Whom?" at Pepperdine University School of Law put on by the Herbert and Elinor Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion and Ethics. Lund presented his paper, "Legislative Prayer and the Secret Costs of Religious Endorsements," which was published in the Minnesota Law Review. - November 1, 2011
Christopher Lund spoke at a symposium at Duquesne University School of Law entitled, "The Future of the Establishment Clause in Context: Neutrality, Religion, or Avoidance?" The papers from the symposium will be published in the Chicago-Kent Law Review in 2012. http://www.duq.edu/law/establishment/ - October 31, 2011
Christopher Lund spoke at the University of California at Davis School of Law, one of two law professors debating the ministerial exception and the Supreme Court’s current case, EEOC v. Hosanna-Tabor. http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/news/event.aspx?id=2750 - October 31, 2011
Christopher Lund travelled to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Law to speak as a panelist for a symposium put on by the First Amendment Law Review. The symposium, “Discrimination By and Against Religion and the First Amendment,” featured law professors from across the country, with a keynote address given by Dr. Martin Marty of the University of Chicago. http://www.firstamendmentlawreview.org/symposium.html - September 16, 2011
Christopher Lund spoke at the 6th annual Labor and Employment Law Colloquium in Los Angeles, California. He presented his forthcoming paper, "In Defense of the Ministerial Exception," which will be published in the North Carolina Law Review later this year. - July 27, 2011
Christopher Lund was an invited panelist for the July 25 First Amendment Workshop at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools annual event in Hilton Head, S.C. He discussed the state of the Free Exercise Clause, drawing on his published paper, "Religious Liberty After Gonzales: A Look at State RFRAs." He also moderated the panel, "Student Speech in the Wake of Morse v. Frederick," discussing the scope of student free speech rights after the Supreme Court's decision in Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393 (2007), which upheld punishment of a student for displaying a banner which read, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" during a school field trip.On June 23, Professor Lund spoke at the Law and Religion Roundtable as part of a panel on EEOC v. Hosanna-Tabor, an upcoming Supreme Court case that will decide to what extent churches and other religious organizations are immune from discrimination claims brought by those with significant religious duties.
- October 12, 2010
Christopher Lund spoke at the Fall 2010 Indigenous Law Conference, which was held Oct. 8-9 at the Michigan State University College of Law. The Conference was titled, "Persuasion and Ideology," and Lund spoke on the religious liberty panel (along with Douglas Laycock, Frank Ravitch and Troy Brown), discussing how politics and ideology enter into the adjudication of religious liberty claims. - October 12, 2010
Christopher Lund will speak at the John Marshall School of Law in Chicago, Illinois on Oct. 15 on a panel titled, "Salazar v. Buono and the Future of the Establishment Clause." The panel brings together four young scholars of religious liberty - Mary Jean Dolan, Ian Bartrum, Lisa Shaw Roy and Chris Lund - to discuss papers they wrote on the Supreme Court's recent decision in Salazar v. Buono, 130 S. Ct. 1803 (2010), regarding the constitutionality of a cross displayed on federal land in the Mojave National Preserve. The papers are being published by the Northwestern Law Review Colloquy, and Lund's contribution is here. - July 29, 2010
Christopher Lund will presented his paper, "Legislative Prayer and the Secret Costs of Religious Endorsements" at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Conference in Florida in August. The paper was one of three papers selected by an expert panel of scholars from a general call for papers, and it will be presented at the SEALS annual luncheon. - July 29, 2010
Christopher Lund organized a panel, "The Changing Religion Clauses," at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Conference in Florida that will take place in August. He will present his paper, "Salazar v. Buono and the Changing Establishment Clause" at the conference. - July 20, 2010
Christopher Lund spoke on Luck and Adjudication at Brooklyn Law School at Prawfsfest, a gathering of young scholars affiliated with PrawfsBlawg, an academic legal blog. - February 25, 2010
Christopher Lund travelled to the University of South Dakota School of Law to speak at a symposium titled, "The Twenty Year Anniversary of Employment Division v. Smith: Reassessing the Free Exercise Clause and the Intersection between Religion and the Law." The symposium was held on Feb. 18, 2010, and was hosted by the South Dakota Law Review and the USD Indian Law Symposium Planning Group. The symposium papers will be published later this year in an issue of the South Dakota Law Review. More information at http://www.usdnalsa.org/symposium/. - January 7, 2010
Christopher Lund will become chair of the Section on Law and Religion on Jan. 8, 2010, at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools. He has served previously in year-long terms as programming chair and chair-elect of the Section. - August 27, 2009
Christopher Lund presented a paper, "Keeping the Government's Religion Pure: Pleasant Grove City v. Summum," at the annual conference of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) in West Palm Beach, Florida. The paper was published earlier this summer and is available by clicking here and on Lexis/Westlaw at 104 Northwestern Law Review Colloquy 46 (2009). - August 27, 2009
Christopher Lund published an article titled, "The Congressional Chaplaincies," which is now available at 17 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 1171 (2009) on Lexis/Westlaw. - August 27, 2009
Christopher Lund will speak on Sept. 24 at Brooklyn Law School on a panel titled, "Supreme Court Roundup: Religious Messages and Government Land." The panel's focus is on the Supreme Court's recent decision in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum and the Supreme Court's grant of certiorari in Salazar v. Buono. The essays of the four panelists were published in the Northwestern Law Review Colloquy earlier this summer.
- Christopher Lund was quoted in an article in the State Journal (Kentucky) titled "Lawmakers override religious freedom veto."
Read Article - Christopher Lund was quoted in an Associated Press report published in Kentucky.com, an online product of the Lexington Herald Leader. The report was titled "Claims about religious freedom bill lack evidence," which cited a 2010 article by Lund for the South Dakota Law Review.
Read Article - Christopher Lund was quoted in a News-Herald Newspaper article titled "Anti-Sharia proposals about culture, not courts"
Read Article - Christopher Lund was featured in a photo page in the Detroit Legal News titled "Days of Time and Service." The feature was about the 313 Project and volunteers who worked with the group to restore a Detroit Park.
Read Article - Christopher Lund was profiled in the Detroit Legal News.
Read Article - Christopher Lund was quoted in a Metro Times article about how far constitutional protection for religious freedoms extends into employer-employee matters at religious institutions.
Read Article - Christopher Lund commented in a Metro Times article titled "Court and Church: Michigan case puts church v. state before the U.S. Supreme Court." The U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing a case arising from a local matter involving a teacher at a small Lutheran elementary school in suburban Detroit over federal civil rights protections. Cheryl Perich wanted her job back after a six-month disability leave and school officials refused, a dispute that could be used to clarify whether hundreds of thousands of employees at parochial schools and other church-affiliated institutions deserve federal civil rights protections. While the federal law in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and ethnicity, it does contain a provision in which a religious employer may only hire individuals who practice that religion if their job duties include instruction in church doctrine or other "propagation of a particular religion," a practice referred to as ministerial exception. "There's a lot of significance to this. ... The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether this ministerial exception exists and, if so, whether this parochial school teacher qualifies as a minister," Lund said. "One of the issues on which the lower courts are divided is whether these types of parochial school teachers qualify as ministers under the ministerial exception. Some lower courts have said they do, some have said they don't. One of the jobs of the Supreme Court is to resolve differences from lower courts."
Read Article - Christopher Lund commented in a Detroit Free Press article titled "Attorney General Bill Schuette: EMU's student's religious beliefs against homosexuality violated."
Read Article - Christopher Lund commented in a Detroit Free Press article titled "University of Michigan's campus ban reviewed after 2,000 are restricted." Professor Lund discussed some potential constitutional problems with U-M's policy.
Read Article