Adan Ershied

Research interests: Comparative constitutional law; law and religion; religious minorities and public space; empirical methods.

Bio: Adan Ershied is a PhD candidate in law. Her research combines comparative constitutional analysis with quasi-experimental empirical methods to study how legal systems structure the status of religion and religious minorities.

Research summary: Adan's dissertation, The Legal Construction of Religious Identity, examines how law constructs religion across constitutional design, judicial practice, and the regulation of public space. It begins by mapping the constitutional models that allocate recognition and authority to religion comparatively, across thirty countries, from suppression to theocracy, to show how constitutional systems structure religion's place in public life. It then follows these models into practice: into the courts, tracing how U.S. religion jurisprudence shifts across different doctrinal models while a persistent pattern in whose harm counts stays untouched; and into public space, testing whether legal restrictions on religious visibility - like Europe's full-face veil bans - actually deliver on their promise of "living together," using Switzerland and Germany's staggered adoption of face-covering laws as natural experiments.

This information is accurate as of the affiliate year indicated. (last updated 09.11.2026)