Picture by Anna Sulencka on Pixabay. On Monday, May 2, 2022, an unknown person or persons leaked Justice Alito’s draft opinion for Dobbs v. Mississippi Department of Health, an opinion which would overrule Roe v. Wade. Roe, as is widely known, enshrines a putative constitutional right to abortion and is largely buttressed by Planned Parenthood…
Image: “Obergefell v. Hodges Decision Announced — June 26, 2015” by Matt Popovich. The conflict between gay rights and religious liberty is back (if it can be said to have left), this time in 303 Creative v. Elenis, a Supreme Court case which arrives under the guise of free speech. The religious claimant will almost…
Picture by Kim MacKinnon on Unsplash. Apocalypse: A Short History Apocalypse is, in a short definition, the history of the future leading up to the end of the world. While it is difficult to say precisely when apocalypse as a literary-religious genre first evolved, the form in which most encounter it today was developed during…
Picture by Narcis Ciocan on Pixabay. On December 17, 2021, the U.S. Department of State’s Office of International Religious Freedom issued a joint statement on behalf of the International Religious Freedom and Belief Alliance (IRFBA), condemning the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in several countries, and calling on governments worldwide, inter alia, to release prisoners, end…
“Candlelight” from Pixabay (License) Prayer is everywhere. Everyone is disputing prayer, even though the First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Or maybe the problem lies in the wording of the amendment itself. Establishment or free exercise? The Supreme Court has set numerous…
Picture on Pixabay. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated its willingness to intervene on critical questions of legal preparedness and response. Along the way, through two Presidential administrations and major shifts in the Court’s members, it has systematically reshaped core constitutional norms during the deadliest infectious disease crisis the nation has…
Picture of the US Supreme Court by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash. The newest edition of Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment is supplemented by a powerful new research tool: SCOTUSreligioncases.org. Building a free online database of First Amendment religion cases I first encountered Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment in 2006. Then in its second…
Picture by Rosemary Ketchum on Pexels. The author wishes to thank Timothy Rush and George Lundskow for their helpful input related to this essay. In a series of recent articles in the journal Critical Sociology my colleagues and I explored the hazards of conspiracy theories within contemporary media spaces and political culture. While conspiracy theories…
Photo by Annett Klingner on Pixabay. This article is part of our “Russia/Ukraine: Law and Religion Perspectives” series. If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. “There is no such thing as a just war: they do not exist!” In a speech at the Vatican Apostolic Palace on March 18,…
Photo by Victor Moussa on adobe.stock.com. The contemporary debate around the right to free exercise of religion — and its limits — focuses overwhelmingly on conservative Christian beliefs about sex, gender, marriage, and reproduction. This is understandable given the vast resources and focus that the Christian right has placed on gaining religious exemptions from laws…