“Ramirez v. Collier: Will the Supreme Court Expand the Right to the Presence of a Spiritual Advisor for Prisoners During Execution?” by Peter Wosnik

Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Ramirez v. Collier: Will the Supreme Court Expand the Right to the Presence of a Spiritual Advisor for Prisoners During Execution?” Peter Wosnik In September 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a rare, eleventh-hour stay in an execution case for prisoner John Ramirez. Ramirez was convicted of stabbing

“Christianity and the International Criminal Court” by Johan Van der Vyver

Photo of Lady Justice (Pixabay). In 2021, Johan D. van der Vyver, I.T. Cohen Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the Emory University School of Law, published a three-volume treatise on international criminal law. Volume One deals with The History and Structures of the International Criminal Court; Volume Two is devoted to Crimes within the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court;

“The First Word: To Be Human is to be Free” by Desmond M. Tutu

Photo by kylefromthenorth on Unsplash. We at Canopy Forum join the world in lamenting the recent death and celebrating the remarkable life of Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu. The following text is based on a keynote lecture that Archbishop Tutu offered to conclude the international conference on “Christianity and Democracy in Global Context,” November 11-14, 1991, convened by

“The Mainstreaming of Alt-Right Media” by Sarah Riccardi-Swartz

Million MAGA March at US Capitol East, November 14, 2020. Source: Elvert Barnes Photography. (CC BY-SA 2.0). “we live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable,” opined former President Trump in a press release issued through his new technology

“Locke, Toleration and Political Participation – A New Manuscript” by Craig Walmsley

Portrait of John Locke by Godfrey Kneller. (PD-US). 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

“An Evaluation of Religious Exemptions from COVID-19 Vaccine Requirements” by Samuel L. Bray and Nathan S. Chapman

Photo by Jurga Ka on Unsplash. 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

“Enter the Metaverse: The Religious & Legal Study of The Matrix in Modern Society” by Mark Blankenship

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash. 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

“Ceci n’est pas une pipe: The Crucifix in Italian Schools in the Light of Recent Jurisprudence” by Francesco Alicino

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

“Law and the Christian Tradition in Modern Russia” Foreword by John Witte, Jr.

Law and the Christian Tradition in Modern Russiaedited by Paul Valliere and Randall A. Poole This volume is part of a 50-volume series on “Great Christian Jurists in World History,” presenting the interaction of law and Christianity through the biographies of 1,000 legal figures of the past two millennia. Commissioned by the Center for the

“Free as F*ck: Kyle Rittenhouse, Whiteness, and a Divinely-Ordained Order to Kill” by Robert P. Jones

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