Areas of Expertise
Employment discrimination litigation; religion and American legal history; ministerial exception within U.S. employment law; international human rights law
Biography
Whittney Barth is an associate teaching professor at Emory Law School and the executive firector and Charlotte McDaniel Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. She teaches courses in law and religion and in employment law and serves as the concentration advisor for students pursuing the law and religion JD concentration. In her capacity as CSLR executive director, Barth creates new and plays a leadership role in existing CSLR-sponsored research projects, programs, and collaborations; spearheads the planning and hosting of public and private events consistent with the Center’s mission; recruits and leads CSLR staff, fellows, and visiting scholars; and manages the Center’s daily and strategic operations and fundraising.
Barth has authored pieces that appear or are forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review, the ABA Journal of Labor and Employment Law, the Michigan State Law Review, and the Chicago Journal of International Law. She has co-authored pieces that appear in the University of Illinois Law Review Online, Law360, Bloomberg Law, and in volumes published by Oxford University and Georgetown University presses. She co-edits with Prof. John Witte, Jr. the Elements in Law and Religion Series (Cambridge University Press) and she is the co-PI (with Silas Allard) of a 2026 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, “Law and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Toolkit for the Humanities Scholar,” to be held at Emory Law School in July 2026.
Barth joined CSLR after nearly three years as a litigator with a nationally-recognized plaintiffs’ firm where she worked primarily on employment discrimination matters. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and was Executive Comments Editor of the Chicago Journal of International Law. Barth served as a teaching assistant for two undergraduate courses in the University of Chicago’s Laws, Letters, and Society Program and completed internships with several national advocacy organizations.
Prior to law school, Barth served for nearly five years as the Assistant Director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. She earned her Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and her Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Miami University, where she completed a double major in Comparative Religion and American Studies and a minor in Political Science. While at Miami, Barth received the President’s Distinguished Service Award and the Provost Student Academic Achievement Award and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.
Her research interests include, among other topics: the place and impact of religion in American legal history; law, religion, and technology; the intersections of religion and antidiscrimination law; and the role of religious actors in the development of international human rights law.