A manuscript by the philosopher John Locke recently discovered in North Carolina raises fundamental questions of political participation. John Locke’s influence on the Founding Fathers in their formulation of the U.S. Constitution is well-known. It was Locke who argued, in the 1689 Two Treatises of Government, that government depends upon the consent of the governed.…
December 9th marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Doctors’ Trial at Nuremberg, which sought justice against twenty-three physicians and administrators for their crimes against humanity during the Holocaust. In his opening statement for the prosecution, Brigadier General Telford Taylor described “murders, tortures, and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science”…
This article also appears at Mere Orthodoxy. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many deaths and much suffering. It has also created a number of acute challenges for churches, one of which is how to think about religious exemptions to vaccine requirements. These requirements are sometimes imposed by employers, and sometimes by government officials. When individuals…
As you can see, we’ve had our eye on you for some time now Mr. Anderson. It seems that you have been living two lives. In one life, you’re Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out…
With a 65-page decision, the Joint Section of the Supreme Court (Sezioni Unite della Corte di Cassazione), the highest Italian Court, has ruled on the display of the crucifix in public school classrooms. Issued on September 9, 2021, decision no. 24414/2021 synthesizes an extensive number of precedents, including those of the Italian Constitutional Court and…
On December 1, 2021, the United States Supreme Court will hear the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that threatens to be the death knell for abortion rights, reproductive freedom, and the right of women to bodily autonomy and security in the U.S. In Dobbs, Mississippi’s last remaining abortion clinic is…
Today the news broke that Kyle Rittenhouse had been “acquitted on all charges in the shooting deaths of two men and wounding of a third at a Wisconsin protest against racial injustice last year,” as AP put it. I don’t say this glibly: God help us. Rittenhouse, as we would say growing up, was clearly “looking for…
Pope Francis and President Joe Biden at the Vatican, October 29, 2021. Source: Wikimedia The meeting between President Joe Biden and Pope Francis at the Vatican has left us with memorable photographs and an important moment in history. What remains with me most vividly is the fact of the meeting itself, stripped of ceremony and…
One of the most contentious issues in constitutional law is whether governmental action amounts to “an establishment of religion” in violation of the First Amendment. For the past fifty years, the Court has often, but not always, resolved Establishment Clause cases using the three-pronged test established by Lemon v. Kurtzman. Under the Lemon test, a court must ask…
In the summer of 2021, the French National Assembly and Senate passed the so-called “anti-separatism” bill, signed into law by Emanuel Macron, ostensibly to protect laïcité, the French secularist doctrine designed to ensure government neutrality toward religion. The new law increases scrutiny by the government of religious associations, bars homeschooling (except in some instances which…