Image of Palacio del Centro Asturiano, Havana, Cuba by Carol M. Highsmith (CC0) 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 18(2) features full length articles in Spanish and English. Read Flores’ long-form essay on the Cuban…
Makoko Lagos, Nigeria by Collins Okoh (CC BY-SA 4.0) A longstanding debate in the social sciences concerns whether violence in civil conflicts targets specific groups or is indiscriminate. Security scholar Stathis Kalyvas, in his 2006 seminal book The Logic of Violence in Civil War, argues that indiscriminate violence is less likely when actors have high…
St. Isidore of Seville (1655) depicted by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (CC0). Introduction As I discussed previously, a controversy arose on June 5, 2023, when Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board authorized the creation of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. Named after the patron saint of the internet, and intended to operate under the leadership of…
Image of Ten Commandments outside of Stephens County Courthouse from WikiMedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). It’s already back to school time, and while students in Louisiana and Oklahoma may notice that the Ten Commandments and Bible are now in their classrooms and curricula, religion has always been part of the structure of public schools in the…
Photo of Supreme Court of Pakistan from Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Pakistan’s Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Act (XX of 2017) represents a significant step towards increasing female participation within the legal sphere. With specific provisions on female representation in court-mandated mediation and ADR centers, this Act moves Pakistan towards a more inclusive and equitable legal…
Photo of Aleksandr Dugin on Wikimedia by Mahdieh Gaforian (CC BY-SA 4.0). Alexandr Dugin is a Russian ultranationalist political theorist and television commentator. He currently serves as the head of the newly established “Ivan Ilyin Higher School of Politics” (HSP) at the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH) in Moscow. In recent years, he has been…
Temple of Heaven in Beijing, China by Maros (CC BY-SA 3.0) In this article, I will make some general arguments regarding the subject of law and religion in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and conclude with specific observations from my fieldwork over the last twenty years on China’s Protestant population. Grasping what “law” and…
The Arrival of Pilgrim Fathers by Antonio Gisbert (Public Domain) Protections for the religious freedom and internal affairs of religious organizations are largely a matter of judge-made First Amendment law. While the Supreme Court has acted to protect institutional religious freedom in important cases, many American jurisdictions take a narrow view of this right and…
Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces Patriot on Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). In an interview at the beginning of 2024, the far-right Russian ideologue, Alexander Dugin, sought to justify Russian military aggression as a mission of redemption. In fact, he likened Russia’s so-called “special military operation” to the Passion of Christ. He said, “Our…
Photo on Wikimedia by EOverbey (CC BY-SA 3.0). In 2013, Jane Doe 6 was a residential student at Liberty University, the country’s largest Baptist Christian university. One night, her boyfriend invited her to his house, gave her two glasses of wine, and she immediately became immobile from a date rape drug he put in her…