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Michigan State University College of Law

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Program Director

Frank Ravitch, Program Director, Professor of Law, and Walter H. Stowers Chair of Law and Religion
315 Law College Building
Michigan State University College of Law
East Lansing, MI 48824-1300
517/432-6973
fravitch@law.msu.edu

Professor Ravitch's career has included experience in private practice and on Capitol Hill. Since joining the Law College he has authored several books, and a number of law review articles, essays, book reviews, and book chapters, as well as amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He is the author of Marketing Creation: The Law and Intelligent Design (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Masters of Illusion: The Supreme Court and the Religion Clauses (NYU Press 2007); Law and Religion, A Reader: Cases, concepts, and Theory (2nd Ed. West 2007) (3rd edition due 2011), School Prayer and Discrimination: The Civil Rights of Religious Minorities and Dissenters (Northeastern University Press, 1999 & paperback edition 2001); and Employment Discrimination Law (Prentice Hall, 2005) (with Pamela Sumners and Janis McDonald).

Currently, Professor Ravitch is working on a treatise, Religion and the State in American Law (with Scott Idelman and the late Boris Bittker). This project is supported by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment. Professor Ravitch's articles, which have appeared in a number of highly regarded journals, have primarily focused on law and religion, but he has also written about civil rights law and disability discrimination.

In 2001, he was named a Fulbright scholar and served on the law faculty at Doshisha University (Japan), where he taught courses relating to U.S. constitutional law and law and religion. He served on a Fulbright Review Committee under the auspices of the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars. Complementing his professional service is his commitment to community service; Professor Ravitch has made dozens of public presentations explaining the law before school groups, community groups, and service clubs and has served as an expert commentator for print and broadcast media.

He teaches Constitutional Law I, Law and Religion, Torts I, and Law and Interpretation. His current research projects include work on the treatise mentioned above, the chapter on Law and Religion for the Columbia Guide to Religion in America (Columbia Univ. Press), and an article on free exercise of religion in Japan and the United States of America.

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