The Baths of Caracalla in Rome, Italy by Vyacheslav Argenberg (CC BY 4.0). Democratic systems in the contemporary world are often interpreted through the paradigm of secularization, understood as “the emergence of a civilization in which the holders of sacred knowledge no longer possess a monopoly over spiritual production, and in which civil society, emancipated…
The Expulsion of Adam and Eve by After Domenichino, Italian, 1581-1641 (US-PD-Art). The Religious Right was a consortium of mostly evangelical pastors and public activists who saw modern American culture as godless and degenerate, and sought the regulation of many social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and pornography. Over time however, the Religious Right…
A Free Exercise SurpriseDonald Drakeman The following is an introductory essay to Donald Drakeman’s upcoming book, The Free Exercise Clause and the Rights of Conscience (Harvard University Press, 2026). Drakeman’s work will be available for purchase November 2026. I hadn’t expected to write a book about the Free Exercise Clause. My work on the religion…
Aerial of Kigali Convention Center by Emmanuel Kwizera (CC BY-SA 4.0). I approached attending the recent African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ACLARS) 2026 Rwanda conference on “Law, Religion and Youth in Africa” with some amount of trepidation. For someone who was studying law and religion, particularly human rights law, at the time of…
The Religious Left: What It Does and How It Can Do BetterRobert Wuthnow Material excerpted from The Religious Left: What It Does and How It Can Do Better by Robert Wuthnow © 2026 by New York University Press. Excerpted with permission from the publisher. Generations of readers have been amply informed about the Religious Right.…
Secular-Christian Social Justice: Climate, Race, and Gender in the 21st CenturyNoa Ben-Asher Material excerpted from Secular-Christian Social Justice: Climate, Race, and Gender in the 21st Century by Noa Ben-Asher © 2026 by New York University Press. Excerpted with permission from the publisher. In the opening decades of the twenty-first century, a distinctive vocabulary has emerged…
Twentieth-Century Redlining Map from the National Archives. In the United States, the narrative of belonging has long been told through access to housing and home. Although the over-regulation of physical residences, presence of racial restrictions, and rejection of land rights have done substantial social and economic damage, these harms also communicate a broader message: “you…
The world premiere of Puccini’s “Suor Angelica”, Metropolitan Opera, New York City, 1918 by White Photo Studio. This paper summarizes and translates into English the chapter Suor Angelica: il suicidio tra teologia e diritto, from the book Puccini in Law: Raccolta di studi in occasione dell’anno pucciniano, edited by Domenico Di Micco, Mario Riberi, and…
Image of Padre Filiberto Velázquez Florencio created by Leonardo Hernández Arrendondo for Dr. Solís’ project. The following essay is reprinted and adapted on Canopy Forum in collaboration with the journal Derecho en Sociedad, a biannual electronic publication that is free and open access. Their issue 20(1) features full length articles in Spanish and English. Read Yves Bernardo Roger Solís Nicot, Maria…
Constitutional Court of South Korea by Wei-Te Wong (CC BY-SA 2.0) Within five years, three of Asia’s major democracies stopped treating adultery as a crime. South Korea’s Constitutional Court struck it down in February 2015 in 2009 Hun-Ba 17; India followed in 2018, Taiwan in 2020. The pattern is usually filed under a familiar heading—traditional…