Law School Names New Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Professor Tom Berg will succeed Professor Jerry Organ as the University of St. Thomas School of Law’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. In addition to being an outstanding teacher and highly respected by his colleagues and students, Professor Berg is nationally renowned scholar in the law of religious liberties. After eight years of playing a major leadership role at the School of Law, Dean Thomas Mengler announced Berg’s appointment Monday, June 15, 2009 in an e-mail to the students, faculty and staff.
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.
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.
Professor Organ will return to the School of Law’s faculty. He served as the school’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for four years.
