Internal Revenue Service Building in Washington, D.C. Photo from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive. This article is part of our series on Law, Religion, and The Johnson Amendment. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. Some time around twenty years ago, when I was a lawyer instead of a law professor, I…
A Woman Reading by Ivan Kramskoi (PD-Art). The right and responsibilities of parents regarding their children’s religious education form a foundation of religious freedom. In many legal systems, this right is considered an implicit component of the broader freedom of religion or right to education. However, a specific, explicit constitutional guarantee for parents’ right to…
FAN Members hold vigil during the Supreme Court hearing by Ilovestfrancis (CC BY-SA 3.0) This article is part of our series on Law, Religion, and Immigration. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. Nomos, Narrative, and the “Alien” Law is more than a system of codified rules. A world of law, as…
Tonto National Forest by Janet Ward (CC BY 2.0). Among the Supreme Court’s most significant decisions on religious exercise this term was the decision not to act. The case—Apache Stronghold v. United States—was relisted 17 times before the Court issued a denial of certiorari indicating they would not hear the case. The conflict involved a…
Shah Faisal Mosque, Islamabad, Pakistan via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). The Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s legal system presents a distinctive pluralistic model, intertwining secular common law inherited from British colonial rule with Islamic jurisprudence, or fiqh, under a single constitutional framework. The 1973 Constitution declares Islam as the state religion and mandates that all…
AI image made by the author to demonstrate Aldous Huxley‘s writing. “Mysticism” – the experience of union with ultimate reality – is often described as a summum bonum of human religious experience, and a central feature of the psychedelic experience. Indeed, in describing psychedelic experiences, “mystical experience” is one of the most frequent terms…
United States Department of Defense Building (US-PD). The executive order of President Trump to turn the Department of Defense into the Department of War is profoundly ominous. Especially when combined with the president’s desire to eliminate the United States Institute of Peace, thereby discouraging a search for alternatives to war, and to portray the U.S. military as “ruthless,” as both he and…
Italian Chamber of Deputies in Palazzo Montecitorio, Rome, Italy by Palazzo del Quirinale (PD-ItalyGov) This paper summarizes and translates into English the article, Democrazia e religioni oltre il concordato e le intese: verso una declinazione partecipativa nei rapporti tra Stato e confessioni religiose?, published in the Italian Law & Religion Journal, Stato, Chiese e pluralismo…
Reading the Bible by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (US-PD). During the Protestant Reformation, the Herborn Academy was a Calvinist Reformed institution located in German territory, which was therefore Lutheran. It operated from 1584 until 1817. Herborn was the cradle of covenant theology, also known as federal theology. Due to its adherence to Calvinism, it was never officially…
Courtroom Bench Gavel by Patrick Feller (CC BY 2.0). A new memorandum from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), issued July 28, 2025, has put the spotlight on religious expression in federal workplaces. OPM Director Scott Kupor’s guidance explicitly affirms that federal employees “may seek to ‘persuade others of the correctness of their own…