Branton J. Nestor is a non-resident fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and Westmont College, and he clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain on the Ninth Circuit, and Judge Julius N. Richardson on the Fourth Circuit. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and the Notre Dame Law Review: (1) Note, The Original Meaning and Significance of Early State Provisos to the Free Exercise of Religion, 42 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 971 (2019) (cited several times by Justice Alito’s concurrence in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 593 U.S. 522 (2021)), (2) Revisiting Smith: Stare Decisis and Free Exercise Doctrine, 44 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 403 (2021), and (3) Judicial Power and Church Autonomy, 100 Notre Dame L. Rev. — (2025). His scholarship focuses on law and religion, in addition to legal history and federal courts.