University of St. Thomas

Professor Berg's Web Page
Professor Berg's Curriculum Vitae

J.D., University of Chicago Law School
M.A., Religion, University of Chicago
M.A., Philosophy and Politics, Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar)
B.S., Northwestern University

Thomas Berg grew up in Chicago and received a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University, an M.A. in philosophy and politics from Oxford University, and both an M.A. in religious studies and a J.D. from the University of Chicago, all with honors. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. While in law school, Berg served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and won the Beale and Bustin prizes for legal writing and student scholarship. He also served as musical director for three law school student musical comedy shows.

After clerking for Judge Alvin Rubin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Berg practiced law in Chicago with Mayer, Brown and Platt. In addition to handling general commercial litigation, Berg specialized in writing briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals, and also handled a range of legal matters for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and other religious institutions.

Before joining the St. Thomas faculty, Berg taught for 10 years at Samford University’s Cumberland Law School. In addition to teaching constitutional law, law and religion, intellectual property, civil procedure, and federal courts, Berg has established himself as one of the leading scholars of law and religion in the United States. He has written approximately 60 articles in law reviews and religion journals on religious freedom, constitutional law, and the role of religion in law, politics and society. Berg is the author of The State and Religion in a Nutshell (now in a second edition), part of West Publishing Company's leading series of law books; and he is co-author with Michael McConnell and John Garvey of Religion and the Constitution, a casebook published by Aspen Publishing (second edition forthcoming). Berg is also working on Diversity and Devotion, a legal and cultural history of American church-state relations since World War II.

At St. Thomas, Berg is co-director of the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy. He has written more than 25 briefs on issues of religious liberty and free speech in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts and has often testified to Congress in support of legislation protecting religious freedom. For this work, he received the Religious Liberty Defender of the Year Award from the Christian Legal Society in 1996. He has also received the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award (2004) from the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, for the Religion and the Constitution casebook, and the John Courtney Murray Award from DePaul University College of Law for scholarly and other contributions to church-state studies.

Berg has also been a visiting professor at the University of Aix-Marseille in Aix-en-Provence, France, and the University of Siena in Italy.  He has made numerous presentations to academic, professional, religious, and community groups, including the annual conventions of the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools. He is a regular contributor to Mirror of Justice, a weblog on Catholic legal theory. He is past chair of the Law and Religion Section of the Association of American Law Schools and a member of advisory committees for the National Council of Churches, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the DePaul University Center for Church-State Studies, the Christian Legal Society, and the Democrats for Life of Minnesota. He is also a member of the European-American Consortium on Church-State Relations, and an associate of the Crossroads Center for Faith and Public Policy.

Representative Scholarship

The Free Exercise Clause: Its Constitutional History and the Contemporary Debate (edited) (Prometheus Books 2007)

Religion and the Constitution, with Michael McConnell and John Garvey (Aspen Publishers, 2d edition 2006) (with Teachers' Manual).

Religious Organizations in the United States: A Study of Identity, Liberty and the Law , edited with James Serritella, Cole Durham, Edward Gaffney, and Craig Mousin, ( Carolina Academic Press 2006)

The State and Religion in a Nutshell (West Group, 2d edition, 2004)

Intellectual Property and the Preferential Option for the Poor, 5 Journal of Catholic Social Thought 193 (2008).

Can Religious Liberty Be Protected As Equality?, 85 Texas Law Review 1185 (2007).  

John Courtney Murray and Reinhold Niebuhr: Natural Law and Christian Realism , 4 Journal of Catholic Social Thought 3 (2007).

Pro-Life Progressivism and the Fourth Option in American Public Life, 2 University of St. Thomas Law Journal 235 (2005) (symposium foreword).

Religion, in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (Kermit Hall ed., Oxford University Press 2005).

Minority Religions and the Religion Clauses, 82 Washington University Law Quarterly 919 (2004).

The Voluntary Principle and Church Autonomy: Then and Now, Brigham Young University Law Review 1593 (2004) (invited symposium contribution).

The Mistakes in Locke v. Davey and the Future of State Payments for Seniors Provided by Religious Institutions, with Douglas Laycock, 40 Tulsa Law Review 227 (2004) (invited lead symposium article).

Vouchers and Religious Schools: The New Constitutional Questions, 72 University of Cincinnati Law Review 151 (2003).

Why A State Exclusion of Religious Schools from Voucher Programs Is Unconstitutional, 2 First Amendment Law Review 22 (2003) (invited symposium contribution).

The Pledge of Allegiance and the Limited State, 8 Texas Review of Law & Politics 41 (2003) (invited article).

Copying for Religious Reasons: A Comment on Principles of Copyright and Religious Freedom, 21 Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal 287 (2003) (invited symposium contribution).

Race Relations and Modern Church-State Relations, 43 Boston College Law Review 1009 (2002) (invited symposium contribution).

Joint Statement of Church-State Scholars on School Vouchers and the Constitution, Principal Drafter, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (2002).

Anti-Catholicism and Modern Church-State Relations, 33 Loyola-Chicago Law Journal 121 (2001) (invited symposium contribution).

Religious Conservatives and the Death Penalty, 9 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 31 (2000) (symposium contribution).

Too Good to Be True: The New Era Philanthropy Scandal and Its Implications, in More Money, More Ministry: Money and Evangelicals in Recent North American History (2000).

The New Attacks on Religious Freedom Legislation And Why They Are Wrong, 21 Cardozo Law Review 415 (1999) (invited symposium contribution).

Religious Speech in the Workplace: Harassment or Protected Speech?, 22 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 959 (1999).

Religion Clause Anti-Theories, 72 Notre Dame Law Review 693 (1997).

Slouching Toward Secularism: A Comment on Kiryas Joel School District v. Grumet, 44 Emory Law Journal 433 (1995).

Church-State Relations and the Social Ethics of Reinhold Niebuhr, 73 North Carolina Law Review 1567 (1995).

Courses Taught

Constitutional Law
Federal Courts
First Amendment: Religious Liberty
Intellectual Property
Law and Religion: Christianity and Politics

Mailing Address

MSL 400
1000 LaSalle Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55403-2015     

"Religion Clause Anti-Theories," 72 Notre Dame L. Rev. 693 (1997).