Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Practicing (and) Catholic” Matthew P. Cavedon Sai Santosh Kumar Kolluru recently reflected for Canopy Forum on how Hindu beliefs and practices inform his service as a lawyer. His writing inspired me to put down some thoughts on the relationship between Catholic theology and my own practice as a…
Photo from Canva In the 2016 presidential election, 81% of white evangelical Christians voted for the GOP candidate Donald Trump, while only 16% gave their votes to Hilary Clinton.This significant margin has the potential to grow further in the 2020 election with the voting polls indicating that 82% of evangelicals would vote for Trump over…
“USA Bible” by Pastor Robert / Flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0 At a campaign event in early August 2020, President Trump made statements about his Democratic rival for the presidency, Joe Biden, that went beyond his typically disparaging remarks about Biden’s policies, cognitive abilities, or political record. Instead, Trump’s comments were decidedly religious. Trump informed…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Free Speakers, Restrained Hearers: Blasphemy’s Legal Evolution“ Matthew P. Cavedon The most infamous terror trial in modern France began in September. Five years ago, Islamist terrorists shot nearly two dozen people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine. The publication had drawn their ire by reprinting…
Tax Law, Religion, and Justice: An Exploration of Theological Reflections on TaxationAllen Calhoun An Introduction by Allen Calhoun This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter forthcoming from Routledge/CRC Press in Tax Law, Religion, and Justice: An Exploration of Theological Reflections on Taxation on March 8, 2021, available online here. Why does the institution of taxation occupy…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Reconciling Retribution and Rehabilitation” Matthew P. Cavedon Ten-year-old Shane Paul O’Doherty pledged to “fight and if necessary die for Ireland’s freedom.” By the time he was 18, he had joined the Irish Republican Army and “developed the letter bomb” after reading about its use by the Palestinian Liberation…
Law and the Christian Tradition in Scandinavia: The Writings of Great Nordic Jurists edited by Kjell Å Modéer and Helle Vogt 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 1000 legal figures of the past two millennia.…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Overly Broad Take on Judges and the Death Penalty” Matthew P. Cavedon Twenty-two years before she was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett co-wrote a law review article on Catholic judges and the death penalty. It has gained attention from…
Photo from Unsplash For the writer on law and religion, the “religious test” question is a gift that keeps on giving. Over two centuries after we enshrined the rule against religious tests as a “Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States” — and, arguably, decades if not more after the Religious…
Photo by Element5 Digital | Unsplash It has been ten presidential election cycles since Ronald Reagan defeated the nation’s most religiously devout president, Jimmy Carter, a feat he accomplished with the overwhelming support of conservative Christian voters. The preceding year (1979) had witnessed the rise of the “Moral Majority” and the Religious Right, and Reagan’s election…