Current Call for Submissions

In addition to its regular content explaining and commenting on a wide range of topics, Canopy Forum also publishes thematic series addressing issues at the intersection of law and religion from a range of perspectives. These series explore important current concerns through a series of essays or other multimedia content published over the course of several days or weeks, and aim to spark further conversations among our readers about how best to think about and deliberate on these questions.

Sacred Sites in Law and Religion

In recent months, there has been global news coverage of threats to the 6th century CE St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt, along with the surrounding town and mountain on the Sinai Peninsula, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site, in order to build a large vacation resort. The monastery is Greek Orthodox, but the area is sacred in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Recent decades have seen threats and damage to, even destruction of, sacred buildings, sacred ruins, and sacred spaces in nature, such as mountains, groves, and gardens, due to forces as diverse as war and conflict, climate change, and economic development. Particularly on the St. Catherine’s case, but from other cases elsewhere, we seek essays on the following questions:

• What makes for the sacredness of these spaces, and why should they be preserved?
• What are the key principles and best practices that should govern their transformation, and can preservation coexist with other political or economic objectives?
• What special challenges might minority and indigenous religions experience in preservation of sacred spaces?
• What laws and heritage management policies exist or should be put into place to preserve sacred sites?

Submissions will be considered for publication on a rolling basis. Submit your essay at canopyforum@emory.edu.

Religious Persecution in Law and Religion

Religious persecution continues to take place in all parts of the world and against many different religions. (Religious persecution has also been an important topic at Canopy Forum, where published essays on the topic receive the highest number of readers.) Moreover, persecution that is labeled “religious” often involves other factors, including ethnicity, socioeconomic inequality, unequal access to resources, and many other factors. With these concerns in mind, we seek essays on the following topics:

• Where, and against whom, is religious persecution happening around the world?
• How does “religious” persecution coexist and interact with discrimination and persecution based on other factors?
• Is persecution mostly against religious minorities, or do majority religions also avail themselves of the law to protect their heritage and traditions?
• What are best practices in national and international law for addressing religious persecution and/or what measures need to be taken?

Submissions will be considered for publication on a rolling basis. Submit your essay at canopyforum@emory.edu.

Executive Branch Developments in Law and Religion

The Trump Administration executive branch has recently issued new executive orders affecting law and religion at the executive branch. First, the Internal Revenue Service recently announced a carve-out for religious organizations, allowing them to endorse political candidates without losing their tax-exempt status. This policy overturns 60 years of a ban on partisan activity by religious organizations under the Johnson Amendment. Second, the Office of Personnel Management issued a memo permitting federal workers to express and promote their religious beliefs in the workplace. These federal developments raise new significant issues of partisanship and proselytization, among others, and we seek essays on the following questions:

• What are the arguments for and against allowing religious organizations to make political endorsements?
• What do religious clergy and organizations across a range of traditions think about the prospect of making political endorsements?
• To what extent do the new OPM rules expand religious expression in the workplace beyond what is currently allowed?
• How will federal and potentially other workplaces manage this new religious accommodation?
• How are these new religious permissions likely to be addressed by Congress and/or the federal judiciary as coequal branches of government?

Submissions will be considered for publication on a rolling basis. Submit your essay at canopyforum@emory.edu.

Law and Religion in Popular Culture

In previous decades, movies and television program, such as “The Firm,” “The Pelican Brief,” “L.A. Law,” “Homicide,” “The Good Wife,” and others explored issues of law and religion and may have inspired some future lawyers to go into the field. (“Law and Order” alone, not to mention its various spinoffs, ran for twenty seasons before being revived in 2022 after an eleven-year hiatus. Today, genres from horror films to music videos trade in normative tropes and themes of law, religion, justice, and spirituality.

With this in mind we seek essays that explore:

• Legal and religious themes (or both) together in popular culture of any genre
• Portrayals of lawyers and clergy in popular culture
• Explorations of faith, spirituality, and justice in popular culture
• Law and religion in plot lines, imagery, sounds, and other aspects of various genres of popular culture.

Submissions will be considered for publication on a rolling basis. Submit your essay at canopyforum@emory.edu.

“Looking Back” In Law and Religion

In recent years, some jurisdictions have created or reinstated “look-back” statutes extending the period within which survivors, particularly of sexual violence or child sexual abuse. These statutes are justified as responses to the long periods of time that it can take for survivors to come forward to report these crimes or to grow up to be adults who can pursue their claims in court. However, “look-back” statutes have been criticized for unsettling the law by allowing claims to proceed long after probative witnesses, evidence, and memories may have become difficult to access. Additionally, many of the “look-back” cases involve claims against religious bodies that can be costly to insure and defend against. Some religious groups have sought to address these claims within religious bodies and through religious law, rather than through civil and criminal law, with varying effects. And recently, the supreme court in the state of Louisiana overturned “look-back” laws in a ruling that they then reconsidered.

Law and religion may have distinctive, but sometimes overlapping, understandings of time, memory, agency, and responsibility for addressing cases of past wrongs. With this in mind we call for essays that explore: 

• Theological and ethical concepts that inform how secular or civil law and religious traditions or institutions adjudicate past crimes and wrongs.
• Perspectives on the function and operation of “look-back” laws in cases of sexual abuse involving religious organizations. 
• Assessments of defenses and criticisms of “look-back” laws from both legal and religious perspectives. 
• Defenses and opposition to “look-back” laws by religious organization defendants and the lawyers they employ.
• Efficacy of “look-back” laws under criminal theories of retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and justice. 

Submissions will be considered for publication on a rolling basis. Submit your essay at canopyforum@emory.edu.

New Topics in Law and Religion

Canopy Forum seeks short articles and multimedia submissions that introduce our readers to new and emerging topics in law and religion. We are currently accepting submissions that address the following:

• Relationships between law and religion in global perspective with topics including but not limited to immigration, education, policy-making, religious freedom or persecution, voting rights, family law, military conflict, the environment, or other issues pertaining to law, religion, and public policy
• Other matters – historical or contemporary – that shed light on the intersections of law and religion 

Submissions will be considered for publication on a rolling basis. Submit your essay at canopyforum@emory.edu.

Please send general inquires and submit contributions to
canopyforum@emory.edu

Canopy Forum welcomes submissions from experts in the field(s) of law and religion, as well as other relevant disciplines, such as theology, ethics, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, political science, history, and other fields. Submissions should be between 1,500-2,500 words (though longer pieces may be considered) and written in a generally accessible style, with embedded links rather than footnotes for supporting materials. When referencing sources, we encourage contributors to use hyperlinks. Additionally, court decisions should be linked once to the first reference to that case, using the full case name (i.e., “In its recent ruling in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the Supreme Court held …”), and, whenever possible, link to the case’s page on the SCOTUS Religion Cases database. Academic papers and presentations should be adapted or rewritten accordingly.