Leslie C. Griffin
William S. Boyd Professor of Law

Areas of expertise:
Constitutional Law, First Amendment, Law and Religion, Bioethics
Bio:
Dr. Leslie C. Griffin is the William S. Boyd Professor of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law. Professor Griffin, who teaches constitutional law, is known for her interdisciplinary work in law and religion. She holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. She is author of the Foundation Press casebooks, Law and Religion: Cases and Materials (4th edition, 2017) and Practicing Bioethics Law (2d ed. 2021), which was co-authored with Joan H. Krause, Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Learning Constitutional Law, written with Penn Professor Marci Hamilton, will be published in 2022 by Cognella Press.
A forthcoming book chapter entitled Rewritten Opinion, Means v. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, will appear in the book Rewritten Health Options (2022). Recent articles include What is Ethical Discharge?, 10:3 Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics 193 (2020); What Can We Expect of Law and Religion in 2020?, 79 SMU L. REV. F. 73 (2020); Traumatic Brain Injury: Compassionate Care, Not Clinical Nihilism, 6:2 JOURNAL OF HOSPITAL ETHICS 87 (Fall 2019) (with Carole S. Anhalt); Conquering Brain Injury, 34:5 Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation 366 (2019), Religious Freedom, Human Rights, and Peaceful Coexistence, 50 Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 77 (2018), Pre-or Post Mortem?, 18 Nevada Law Journal 221 (2017).
Griffin has written numerous amicus briefs defending children's and employees' religious freedom. She also blogs for Justia's Verdict column.
Other writings include Marriage Rights and Religious Exemptions in the United States, Oxford Handbooks Online (2017), Beyond the Basketball Court: How Brittney Griner’s In My Skin Illustrates Title IX’s Failure to Protect LGBT Athletes at Religious Institutions, 34 Law and Inequality 489 (2016), A Word of Warning from A Woman: Arbitrary, Categorical, and Hidden Religious Exemptions Threaten LGBT Rights, 7 Ala. C.R. & C.L.L. Rev. 97 (2015), and The Catholic Bishops vs. the Contraceptive Mandate, Religions 2015, 6, 1411–1432. Her rewritten opinion about the abortion funding case, Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297 (1980), is in Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court (L. Berger, B. Crawford & K. Stanchi, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2016).
In the News
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April 26, 2022Verdict Justia
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February 9, 2022The Washington Post
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December 13, 2021Verdict Justia
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December 9, 2021Battle Born Progress
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October 19, 2021Verdict
Faculty Notable
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January 26, 2022Professor Leslie Griffin looks at the Supreme Court's new case about a football coach publicly praying with students. https://verdict.justia.com/2022/01/26/supreme-court-to-decide-between-es...
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December 9, 2020Professor Griffin presented a CLE for the Philadelphia Bar Association titled "Religious Freedom (to Discriminate?)."
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November 17, 2020Professor Griffin spoke at the Child USA conference on Child Sex Abuse, Religious Institutions, and the First Amendment on November 17, 2020. The title of the talk was Best Practices for Litigating Child Sex Abuse Civil Cases.