Law Professor Thomas Berg is the recipient of the 2024 Notre Dame Religious Liberty Initiative Scholarship Award. The award is given annually to a legal scholar for their accomplishments in law and religion and for contributions to protecting the freedom of religion or belief through law. Berg was honored on July 10 at the Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Initiative’s fourth annual Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit.
“For religious freedom to remain vital, we must make it strong for all faiths, and also think carefully about the boundaries of religious freedom that do need to take into account other important interests while still protecting religious liberty, and that’s where intellectual work and careful thinking comes in,” Berg said at the ceremony. “The long-term health of religious liberty requires defending it with arguments that can cross ideological lines, that can persuade people who are not already predisposed to accepting religious liberty or the particular claim in question.”
Berg is the James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy at St. Thomas Law. He is one of the nation’s leading experts on religious liberty and law and religion.
Other recent honors Berg has received include the Religious Freedom Scholar Award by the Seventh-day Adventist Church North American Division for his contributions to the scholarship of religious liberty and his work as an advocate. His most recent book, Religious Liberty in a Polarized Age (Eerdmans), earned an Award of Merit in the Politics and Public Life category of the 2024 Christianity Today Book Awards. The book discusses religious freedom in America during a time of political and social polarization, when the right to practice and express one's faith faces threats from both progressives and conservatives.
Berg is the author of five additional books, including a leading casebook, Religion and the Constitution (with Michael McConnell and Christopher Lund, Aspen Publishing). He has also written numerous book chapters, journal articles, op-eds and shorter pieces on religious freedom, constitutional law and the role of religion in law, politics and society. His work has been cited multiple times by the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals. Berg also leads St. Thomas Law’s Religious Liberty Appellate Clinic and has written dozens of briefs filed in the Supreme Court and other federal and state courts.
