The Baths of Caracalla in Rome, Italy by Vyacheslav Argenberg (CC BY 4.0). Democratic systems in the contemporary world are often interpreted through the paradigm of secularization, understood as “the emergence of a civilization in which the holders of sacred knowledge no longer possess a monopoly over spiritual production, and in which civil society, emancipated…
A Free Exercise SurpriseDonald Drakeman The following is an introductory essay to Donald Drakeman’s upcoming book, The Free Exercise Clause and the Rights of Conscience (Harvard University Press, 2026). Drakeman’s work will be available for purchase November 2026. I hadn’t expected to write a book about the Free Exercise Clause. My work on the religion…
Constitutional Court of South Korea by Wei-Te Wong (CC BY-SA 2.0) Within five years, three of Asia’s major democracies stopped treating adultery as a crime. South Korea’s Constitutional Court struck it down in February 2015 in 2009 Hun-Ba 17; India followed in 2018, Taiwan in 2020. The pattern is usually filed under a familiar heading—traditional…
Moses and Aaron with the 10 Commandments by Aron de Chaves (PD-Art). This piece was originally published on Divided Argument, a legal blog on April 22nd, 2026. Sometimes a case is meta. Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District, the Fifth Circuit’s recent Ten Commandments decision, aptly captures how deep into the wilderness our religious…
Keynote address at International Conference on Promoting Equality Justice and Human Dignity by Press Information Department (PD) This article is part of our Book Review Roundtable on Andrea Pin’s book, Dignity in Judgement: Constitutional Adjudication in Comparative Perspective (2025).If you’d like to check out other reviews in this series, click here. Human dignity is an elemental value that presupposes…
Among the Sierra Nevada, California by Albert Bierstadt (US-PD). This article is part of our Book Review Roundtable on Andrea Pin’s book, Dignity in Judgement: Constitutional Adjudication in Comparative Perspective (2025).If you’d like to check out other reviews in this series, click here. Human dignity is ubiquitous in contemporary constitutional law. Courts across jurisdictions invoke the…
P.S. Krøyer’s painting of A meeting in the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (PD-Art). This article is part of our Book Review Roundtable on Andrea Pin’s book, Dignity in Judgement: Constitutional Adjudication in Comparative Perspective (2025).If you’d like to check out other reviews in this series, click here. In his book Dignity in Judgment…
Dignity in Judgement between Religious and Secular ThinkingAndrea Pin This text draws on the new book by Andrea Pin,Dignity in Judgment: Constitutional Adjudication in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press 2025). Editorial Note: Page numbers in the text refer to the prior publication linked in the text. To read reviews on this book by scholars, see…
“Martin Luther King, Jr, and the Cost of the Law“Major G. Coleman The following is an adapted excerpt from Major G. Coleman’s book, The Cost of Racial Equality (Cascade Books, 2025). Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers, www.wipfandstock.com Martin Luther King Jr. was not speaking metaphorically when he said, “The practical cost of change for…
Bangly Regency, Bali, Indonesia by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas (CC BY-SA 3.0). Indonesia’s constitutional order reflects one of the most ambitious contemporary efforts to govern religious diversity through law. As an archipelagic state encompassing over 17,000 islands and hundreds of ethnoreligious communities, Indonesia has long confronted the institutional challenge of recognizing religious authority within a plural legal…