John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion and holds a joint appointment in the Washington University Law School and the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics.

Professor Inazu’s scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory. His next book, Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect, will be published by Zondervan in Spring 2024. He also publishes a weekly newsletter, *Some Assembly Required. He is the author of Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale University Press, 2012) and  Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and co-editor (with Tim Keller) of Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference (Thomas Nelson, 2020). Inazu is special editor of a volume on law and theology published in Law and Contemporary Problems, and his articles have appeared in a number of law reviews and specialty journals. He has written broadly for mainstream audiences in publications including USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post.

Inazu earned his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and his J.D. and B.S.E. at Duke University. He clerked for Judge Roger L. Wollman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and served for four years as an associate general counsel with the Department of the Air Force at the Pentagon. From 2014-2015, he was a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He is currently a Senior Fellow with Interfaith America.

On research leave for the 2023-2024 academic year.