The Interactions podcast, a podcast about the interactions between law and religion, is produced by the CSLR and distributed by Canopy Forum. New episodes now available.
Canopy Forum hosted a virtual conference regarding the recent court filing of the Internal Revenue Service, which introduced a reinterpretation of the Johnson Amendment. The conference recording and essays will be published here.
Read essays here from our latest webinar on Law, Religion and Immigration. Our other series include essays on topics like Religious Violations, Transnational Christian Nationalism, IVF, and more.
Dignity in Judgement between Religious and Secular ThinkingAndrea Pin This text draws on the new book by Andrea Pin, Dignity in Judgment: Constitutional Adjudication in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press 2025). Editorial Note: Page numbers in the text refer to the prior publication linked in the text. The concept of human dignity has become a…
Anasuya Feeding the Hindu Trinity, painting on the wall of the Krishna-Sudama Temple of Porbandar (CC0 1.0). In The Illusion of the Repugnant Client: Hindu Ethics in American Legal Practice, I argued that the concept of an inherently repugnant client is incoherent from a dharmic perspective, that the Hindu-American lawyer’s svadharma demands zealous representation of…
“Martin Luther King, Jr, and the Cost of the Law“Major G. Coleman The following is an adapted excerpt from Major G. Coleman’s book, The Cost of Racial Equality (Cascade Books, 2025). Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers, www.wipfandstock.com Martin Luther King Jr. was not speaking metaphorically when he said, “The practical cost of change for…
Aerial view of the House of the Good Shepherd via Denver Public Library (Public Domain). When the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project endeavored to study the “oldest” women’s prison in the United States they pointed not only to the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls—the oldest state penitentiary built exclusively for women—but the Home of the…
Bangly Regency, Bali, Indonesia by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas (CC BY-SA 3.0). Indonesia’s constitutional order reflects one of the most ambitious contemporary efforts to govern religious diversity through law. As an archipelagic state encompassing over 17,000 islands and hundreds of ethnoreligious communities, Indonesia has long confronted the institutional challenge of recognizing religious authority within a plural legal…
Supreme Court of Pakistan by Guilhem Vellut (CC BY 2.0). The pursuit of justice is often described as a journey toward truth, yet in the context of Pakistan’s legal landscape, that journey is frequently stalled by the heavy burdens of delay, exorbitant costs, and procedural complexity. As the backlog of cases in the superior and…
Photo of Santa Muerte iconography. Photo taken by author. In March 2009, Mexican soldiers razed more than forty public shrines to Santa Muerte in Nuevo Laredo and Tijuana, pulverizing cement and plaster images of La Huesuda under the treads of military bulldozers. The spectacular demolitions—repeated in subsequent years, including in Coahuila under President Enrique Peña…
Why Religious Freedom Matters: Human Rights and Human FlourishingAllen D. Hertzke The following is an excerpt from Allen D. Hertzke’s upcoming book, Why Religious Freedom Matters: Human Rights and Human Flourishing (April 2026). Reprinted here with permission from University of Norte Dame Press. Imagine a social force, a potent “X Factor,” that underpins democracy, bolsters civil…
Reformist Prison Theology: God The Slave, God The Prisoner George Walters-Sleyon This essay is an adapted excerpt from the twelve chapter of George Walters-Sleyon’s book,The Rush for Black Diamonds, Volume Two: Chattel Slavery to Penal Slavery in the US and the UK, 1865 to Post-1970 Realities (Cascade Books, 2025). You can view an excerpt from Volume…
Christianity and the Making of Irish Law: Violence, Virtue and ReasonDavid H. McIlroy (ed.) The following essay introduces the new book, Christianity and the Making of Irish Law, Violence, Virtue, and Reason (Routledge, 2026) by the volume’s editor, David H. McIlroy. The volume is now available for purchase via Routledge. Ireland, “the Isle of Saints”,…