University of Georgia
School of Law
306 Hirsch Hall
Athens, GA 30602
United States
B.A., Belmont University
M.T.S., J.D., Duke University
Constitutional Law
Constitutional Law II
Law & Religion
Law & Ethics of Lawyering
Federal Courts
Nathan S. Chapman writes and teaches about constitutional law, especially constitutional rights, and law and religion. Most recently, he is the author, with Michael W. McConnell, of Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Promotes Religious Pluralism and Protects Freedom of Conscience (OUP, 2023). Graduating classes have honored him twice with the C. Ronald Ellington Award for Excellence in Teaching (2018 and 2023) and the Lonnie C. Brown Award for Professionalism (2022 and 2023), and they have selected him twice to serve as a faculty marshal (2021 and 2023). Chapman also regularly teaches Law and Ethics of Lawyering and has served for nearly a decade on the Georgia Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism. He is a McDonald Distinguished Senior Fellow in Law and Religion (Emory Center for the Study of Law and Religion) and a Nootbaar Fellow in Law and Religion (Pepperdine School of Law). He is currently studying the conceptual and theological underpinnings of disestablishment of religion across the Anglophone world from 1776 to 1832. His scholarship on constitutional law has been cited in numerous U.S. Supreme Court opinions.
Chapman holds degrees from Duke University and Belmont University. He clerked for Judge Gerald B. Tjoflat of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, practiced at WilmerHale in Washington, D.C., and served as the executive director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.
He joined the University of Georgia School of Law faculty in 2013.
BOOKS
Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience, (Oxford University Press, 2023) (with M. McConnell).
ARTICLES
"The Arc of the Moral Universe": Christian Eschatology and U.S. Constitutionalism, 98 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1439 (2023)(invited symposium piece).
Fair Notice, The Rule of Law, and Reforming Qualified Immunity, 75 Fla. L. Rev. 1 (2023).
Las Medidas de “Acomodación” de la Religión en el Derecho Estadounidense, 49 Teoría y Realidad Constitucional 121 (2022).
The Practice of Law as Christian Discipleship, 47 Pepp. L. Rev. 331 (2020) (solicited paper for a Festschrift for Robert Cochran).
Forgotten Federal-Missionary Partnerships: New Light on the Establishment Clause, 96 Notre Dame L. Rev. 677 (2020).
Due Process of War, 94 Notre Dame L. Rev. 639 (2018).
Due Process Abroad, 112 Nw. U. L. Rev. 377 (2017).
Adjudication of Religious Sincerity, 92 Wash. L. Rev. 1185 (2017).
The Establishment Clause, State Action, and Town of Greece, 24 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 405 (2015).
The Jury's Constitutional Judgment, 67 Ala. L. Rev. 189 (2015).
Disentangling Conscience and Religion, 2013 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1457 (2013).
Due Process As Separation of Powers, 121 Yale L.J. 1672 (2012) (with M. McConnell).
Law Asks for Trust, 85 St. John's L. Rev. 521 (2011).
CHAPTERS
"Liberty of Conscience, Free Exercise of Religion, and the U.S. Constitution" in Christianity and the Laws of Conscience: An Introduction (Helen Alvare & Jeff Hammond eds., Oxford Univ. Press, forthcoming).
"Christianity and Crimes Against the State" in Christianity and the Criminal Law (Norman Doe, Dick Helmholz, Mark Hill, & John Witte, Jr. eds., Routledge, forthcoming).
"The Weight of Judgment" in Christianity and the Criminal Law (Norman Doe, Dick Helmholz, Mark Hill, & John Witte, Jr. eds., Routledge, forthcoming).
ONLINE
An Evaluation of Religious Exemptions from COVID-19 Vaccine Requirements, Canopy Forum (2021) (with S.L. Bray).
Tech Pluralism, First Things (Nov. 2021).
Constructing the Original Scope of Constitutional Rights, 88 Fordham L. Rev. Online 1 (2019).
The Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, National Constitution Center (with Kenji Yoshino).
Substantive Due Process: Text, History, and Experience, National Constitution Center.