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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. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s formation of the Commission on Unalienable Rights has generated controversy among human rights advocates, in part because of the possibility that the committee will…
—Part II— Part I of this article surveyed the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates’ tax plans and situated proposals for raising revenue and reducing the wealth gap in broader tax policy concerns. The proposals are revisiting two questions dormant since the early 1980s: (1) how should tax policy balance the dual concerns of equity and efficiency;…
—Part I— Many Christian theologians of the past two thousand years would likely have supported a wealth tax, but not for the reasons given by the current Democratic presidential candidates. Using the tax system to redistribute resources from the wealthy to the poor has been a matter of controversy in American history, but it has…
Image by Robert Jones from Pixabay 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. In this brief essay, I propose that the natural law and social justice traditions can together form a powerful partnership that champions anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic causes.…
“Sacred Stone Camp” by Tony Webster / Flickr / CC BY 2.0 The Standing Rock demonstrations, which began in early 2016 and lasted almost a year, have been aptly characterized as the largest Native American activist movement in modern history. More than 300 tribes and scores of water protectors gathered to protest against the construction…
“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…