Professor Angela Carmella’s intellectual focus is the intersection of law and religion, specifically the First Amendment’s religion clauses, religious land use, and Catholic social thought.

In 2007 Professor Carmella delivered an Alpheus T. Mason Lecture in Constitutional Law and Political Thought at Princeton University on religious exemptions and the common good, and spoke at the American Constitution Society’s Conference on the Religion Clauses in the 21st Century. In 2004, she organized the first conference of legal scholars to address the complex issues raised when religious institutions file for bankruptcy. Her interest in articulating religious perspectives on legal issues led to her co-editing a path-breaking collection of essays published by Yale University Press and to her participation in the Emory University Center for the Study of Law and Religion’s Project on Law and Human Nature: the Teachings of Modern Christianity. During the 1994-95 academic year Professor Carmella served as Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, and as a Fellow of Harvard’s Center for the Study of Values in Public Life.

Professor Carmella shares her expertise in the religion clauses with the Law School’s Seton Center for Religiously Affiliated NonProfit Corporations. She serves on the editorial council of Journal of Church and State and served for over a decade on the Legal Scholars Board of DePaul Law School’s Center for Church/State Studies. She is a member of the Religious Liberty Committee of the National Council of Churches and of the Catholic Commission on Intellectual and Cultural Affairs.

Following graduation from Harvard Law School and Harvard Divinity School, Professor Carmella worked as a real estate associate at Csaplar & Bok in Boston. She came to Seton Hall in 1988, was named a Dean’s Fellow in 2006, and was awarded the Francis P. McQuade Research Fellowship in 2007 and again in 2008. She was recently honored with the John Courtney Murray Professorship.