Christopher C. Lund

A celebrated legal scholar, author and professor, Christopher C. Lund joined Dalton & Tomich in November 2018. He is an important part of a team that focuses on helping churches and other religious entities navigate various complex legal issues. These issues range from property disputes resulting from denominational departures to various religious land use and zoning cases, particularly those involving violations of the Religious Land Use & Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).

Chris is one of the nation’s premier thought leaders and writers on law and religion. He is co-author of the casebook, Religion and the Constitution, which is a core text studied at leading law schools across the country. Chris is recognized for his knowledge in the areas of religious land use, denominational trust clauses, religious property issues and employment issues within religious organizations. He also has special expertise in the procedures and practices of various religious denominations, and his work in that regard has been cited several times by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Chris is a professor of law at Wayne State University Law School, where he has been voted Professor of the Year six times. His academic work on religious liberty has been published in various student-edited law reviews, peer-reviewed legal journals such as the Journal of Law and Religion, and peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journals such as History of Religions. In 2017, Chris’s piece, Religion is Special Enough, earned him the Berman Prize for Excellence in Scholarship by the Law and Religion Section of the American Association of Law Schools.

Media outlets, civil rights organizations and religious groups regularly call upon Chris to share insight on various legal issues. He has been cited in articles, books and judicial opinions. Two of his amicus briefs have been quoted in opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Stephen Breyer calling one of them “very excellent” at oral argument. He is a past chair of the Law and Religion Section of the Association of American Law Schools, as well as past chair of the Section on New Law Professors. He sits on the lawyers’ committee of the ACLU of Michigan.

Chris joined Wayne University Law School in 2009 from the Mississippi College School of Law. Before teaching, he clerked for the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, served as the Madison Fellow at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and practiced law at Dechert LLP in Philadelphia. Chris earned his law degree with high honors from the University of Texas School of Law and his bachelor of arts from Rice University, summa cum laude, with majors in mathematics and psychology.