Leslie C. Griffin

  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 (2015), which was co-authored with Joan H. Krause, Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Recent articles include Conquering Brain Injury, 34:5 Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitiation 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), 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). She has also written numerous briefs defending employees’ religious freedom. Other publications include The Sins of Hosanna-Tabor, 88 Ind. L.J. 981 (2013); How Smith Protects Women’s Equality, 32 Cardozo L. Rev. 1831 (2011); Religion and the Courts 1790-1947, in Cambridge History of Religions In America (S. J. Stein, ed., 2012); Fighting the New Wars of Religion: The Need for a Tolerant First Amendment, 62 Maine L. Rev. 23 (2010) and Good Catholics Should Be Rawlsian Liberals, 5 Southern Cal. Interdisc. L.J. 297 (1997). Before becoming a law professor, Professor Griffin clerked for the Honorable Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and was an assistant counsel in the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates professional misconduct by federal prosecutors. Before joining the UNLV faculty, Professor Griffin held the Larry & Joanne Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics at the University of Houston Law Center and was a tenured member of the faculty at the Santa Clara University School of Law. Professor Griffin has held research fellowships at the Harvard Program in Ethics and the Professions and Emory University. She has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, George Washington University Law School, the University of Alabama School of Law, and Georgetown University Law Center.