The Blessings of Liberty: Human Rights and Religious Freedom in the Western Legal TraditionJohn Witte, Jr. The following is excerpted from John Witte, Jr.’s The Blessings of Liberty: Human Rights and Religious Freedom in the Western Legal Tradition, out now from Cambridge University Press. Read Nicholas Wolterstorff’s review of the book here. For the past…
The Polish Contribution to the Global Legal CultureJohn Witte, Jr. The following is excerpted from Law and Christianity in Poland: The Legacy of the Great Jurists, edited by Franciszek Longchamps de Bérier and Rafael Domingo and out now from Routledge. This volume is another signature title in the book series on “Great Christian Jurists in…
The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost VisionErika Bachiochi This excerpt is from the first chapter of The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision and was published by the University of Notre Dame Press (2021). In 1785, John Adams, his wife, Abigail, and their two eldest children departed from his diplomatic post in Paris…
Picture by Adam Kring on Unsplash. “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (1921) “By nonetheless granting relief, the Court goes astray. . . . That renders the Court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all.”Justice Elena Kagan, Louisiana v. American Rivers (2022) Hitler’s Lawyer About a decade ago, the name…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “REVIEW: Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, The Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom by Spencer W. McBride” Peter Wosnik Now a world-wide faith with over 16 million adherents, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (popularly known as Mormonism) began as a small, radical…
Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the Waning of Mainline Protestantism Nicholas Pruitt The following is a modified excerpt from Nicholas Pruitt’s Open Hearts, Closed Doors (2021), used with permission from New York University Press. At the outset of the twentieth century, white Protestants still held a tight grasp on the cultural and social resources…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “The Potential Religious Context of The Fourth Amendment” Peter Wosnik James Madison first introduced the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to Congress in 1789. Since that time, the Fourth Amendment has become a bedrock in criminal procedure in American constitutional law. Thousands of state and federal cases…
Religion and US Empire: Critical New Historiesedited by Tisa Wenger and Sylvester Johnson “Ordinary Affects of U.S. Empire”, A review by Candace Lukasik “American imperialist culture has seeped into Egyptian blood.” – Kirollos We sat on the back patio, eating watermelon in the heat of the sun on a chilly March day in 2021. Kirollos…
Picture by Jez Timms on Unsplash. Meatless Fridays were once one of the most visible markers of Catholic identity. For most of the American faithful, they are now observed only in the special liturgical season of Lent. US bishops should impose it as a weekly matter once again. The pastoral hopes that caused them to…
Southern Baptist Church by Warren LeMay (CC0 1.0) In May of 2022, the news broke that the US Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) had released an independent report investigating the SBC’s handling of sexual harassment and assault by clergy and other employees of SBC-affiliated churches. The report described an institution that prioritized avoiding liability, was callous…