Faculty Profile
At the intersection of church and state: Professor Steve Green anticipates years of debate over business, religion and the First Amendment
To a law professor who’s spent most of his life defending the separation of church and state, the relevance of law and religion in business — or any area of law for that matter — is no surprise. For those less attuned, the furor over the recent Hobby Lobby decision by the U.S. Supreme Court brings the intersection of law, religion and business sharply into focus. “There’s always enough going on in this (freedom of religion) area to keep it fresh and interesting,” says Professor Steven Green, Willamette’s Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law, director of the university’s Center for Religion, Law and Democracy and a First Amendment scholar and advocate. In addition to teaching constitutional law and First Amendment in the law school, Green teaches religious history in Willamette’s undergraduate school. Green holds a master’s degree in religious history and a doctorate in constitutional history as well as a law degree. He spent a decade in Washington D.C. serving as the legal
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