René Pahud de Mortanges studied law at the University of Fribourg i.Ue. (CH), where he also received his Ph.D. in 1986. He then worked from 1987 to 1991 on his ‘Habilitationsschrift’ at the University of Tübingen (Germany), the Max-Planck-Institute for criminal law in Freiburg i. Br. (Germany) and the Institute for Medieval Canon Law at Berkeley Law School (USA).

Since 1992 he holds the Chair of Legal History and Canon Law at the Law Faculty of Fribourg University. He teaches legal history, state-religion relations, religious laws and constitutional law. He also serves as Director of the Institute of Law and Religion, and as Co-Director of the Center of Islam and Society, both at the University of Fribourg. Since 2014 he is Research Fellow at Renmin University in Beijing and Guest Professor at ECUPL in Shanghai.

In the fall term of 2016, René taught at the Center for Transnational Legal studies in London, a partnership in legal education with students and faculty from 23 law schools worldwide and with links to King’s College. The topics of his classes were ‘State, Law and Religion’ and ‘Comparative Constitutional History’.

Alongside his academic work, René regularly serves as consultant to Swiss state authorities on the federal and cantonal levels, to Churches and to other religious communities. He is member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen and member of the board of a number of research institutions in the field of Legal History and Church Law. From 2007 to 2011 he was member of the steering committee of the Swiss National Research Program 57 on State, Society and Religion.

In his publications, René deals with a variety of legal history topics, with state-religion questions in Switzerland, Europe and in Asia as well as with legal questions within Catholic and Protestant laws. He is editor of the book series Freiburger Veröffentlichungen zum Religionsrecht and Europäische Rechts- und Regionalgeschichte and co-editor of the Journal Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Kirchenrecht.