Jim Sonne is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founding director of its Religious Liberty Clinic, the leading and only full-time academic program in the country where students can learn the practice and profession of law through supervised litigation in that field. He is an experienced and award-winning teacher, practitioner, and scholar, with particular expertise in law and religion issues.

Professor Sonne earned his BA with honors from Duke University and his JD with honors from Harvard Law School. He is a former law clerk to Judge Edith Brown Clement of ­­the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Sonne also previously served as an associate professor of law at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Michigan; as an appellate lawyer at Horvitz & Levy in Los Angeles; and as a labor and employment lawyer at McGuireWoods in Richmond, Virginia. He has also served as a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School.

Professor Sonne has published full-length articles in the Clinical Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Georgia Law Review, among others, as well as shorter pieces in the Harvard Law Review, Oxford Journal of Church and State, and New England Journal of Medicine. His work has also been featured by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Law Journal, and California Lawyer.