Join us on Tuesday, Febuary 20th for the next installment of the James Wilson Institute and Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy's ongoing webinar series. Prof. Gerard Bradley of the University of Notre Dame Law Schoool will deliver a webinar on The Orignial Meaning of the Establisment Clause. As part of this series, we will be applying for CLE Ethics Credit in Virginia and Texas for this webinar.

Today’s culture is fraught with religious tension, with opposing interpretations of the Establishment Clause on the rise. Professor Gerard V. Bradley will conduct an inquiry into some of these opposing interpretations by analyzing opinions such as Justice Stevens’ dissent in Van Orden v. Perry, and the recent Kennedy v. Bremerton case. Professor Bradley will show how a clearer understanding of the Founder’s use of the Establishment Clause resolves the tension that the Court has been grappling with between Free Practice and Establishment. In this webinar, Bradley will set these two propositions side by side and will delve into the implications for freedom of exercise in America. 

JWI Co-Director Gerard “Gerry” Bradley teaches Constitutional Law and Legal Ethics at the University of Notre Dame Law School, where he also directs (with John Finnis) the Natural Law Institute and co-edits The American Journal of Jurisprudence, an international forum of legal philosophy. He served as president of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars for many years and has been a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institute of Stanford University. He is also a senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. Bradley received both his B.A. and his J.D. from Cornell University, graduating summa cum laude from the law school in 1980. Before teaching at Notre Dame, he served in the Trial Division of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and taught at the University of Illinois College of Law. In 2009, he was a Visiting Professor of Politics at Princeton University. Bradley has published over one hundred and fifty scholarly articles and reviews, and is the author and editor of twelve books, such as Catholic School Teaching: A Collection of Scholarly Essays (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and Unquiet Americans: U.S. Catholics, Moral Truth, and the Preservation of our Civil Liberties (Saint Augustine’s Press, 2019).