“Dashboard Jesus” by Joseph Novak / Flickr / CC BY 2.0 Police are looking for drug runners near the Mexican border. They see a truck with a crucifix hanging from the rearview mirror. Can they factor this in as a reason to stop the truck? Surprisingly, most federal courts have held yes, albeit as a…
Cover Image: Mouth of the Klamath River on the Pacific Ocean, Del Norte County, California / Wikimedia. This article is part of our “Natural Law, Human Rights, and ‘Unalienable Rights” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. The Trump Administration’s new Commission on Unalienable Rights, recently convened by Secretary of…
“Arms-Fold” by Dorset Photographic is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 On September 12, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit granted habeas corpus relief to William Barnes, who had been previously sentenced to death in North Carolina. The basis for the court’s ruling was the fact that during deliberations at trial, a juror relied on…
Miquel Barceló’s ceiling at the UN headquarters in Geneva. United States Mission Geneva / CC BY-ND 2.0 This article is part of our “Natural Law, Human Rights, and ‘Unalienable Rights” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. The Commission on Unalienable Rights has already generated significant criticism, much of it…
Image retrieved from Pixy (CC0). This article is part of our “Natural Law, Human Rights, and ‘Unalienable Rights” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Attempts by the United States State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights to identify a subset of proper “unalienable rights” within the broader category of human…
Daughters of Charity holy card. 1896. University of Dayton Libraries / Wikimedia Commons. My mother spent 25 years working for a Catholic hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. When she was hired in 1984, Catholic faith was a requirement for management, and nuns roamed the halls. For every five years of service, she received a new metal…
Photo by stokpic on Pixabay (CCO) This fall I taught a graduate seminar on the history of religion in the United States. I have long been committed to transparency as the centerpiece of my pedagogy, which means that I take students behind the scenes of the historical profession and show them how the ideas they…
Red and black abstract photo/ Tobias Aeppli / Pexels Autonomy and dignity are standard grounds for arguments supporting the legalization of assisted suicide. The prima facie case is excellent: forbidding suicide limits human autonomy, and compelling people to live against their will diminishes their self-determination and therefore their dignity. Counter-arguments often rest on assertions about…
Cover image: “Baptistry” by patentboy is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 . What is the position of an individual who, having transitioned from one gender to another, seeks baptism within the Church of England? The sacramental nature of baptism is described in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and the requirements associated with the baptism itself in the Canons of the Church…
Director Vlada Knowlton sat down with the Emory University community to talk about her recent film The Most Dangerous Year. You can watch the trailer for the film above and explore video excerpts from the Q&A below. Gender is a matter of perennial concern in legal and religious spheres, and its implications are often profound: a…