Photo by Jesse Collins on Unsplash This article is part of our “Law, Religion, and the Constitutionalism” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. The meaning of the religion clauses in judicial opinions has changed dramatically over the last 150 years. Doctrine has shifted, sometimes precipitously. The case law…
Photo by Sean Valentine on Pexels This article is part of our “Law, Religion, and the Constitutionalism” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. This essay was originally published on June 16, 2020 in Cato Unbound: A Journal of Debate The Liberty Bell is one of the most prominent…
Photo of Ludwigsburg, Germany marketplace/ maxmann/ Pixabay/ CCO In his dissent in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, wherein the Supreme Court invalidated student-led prayer prior to the start of high school football games, a dismayed Chief Justice William Rehnquist expressed the sentiment of many Americans, that “[t]he Court … bristles with hostility to…
Photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash This article is part of our “Law, Religion, and the Constitutionalism” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Last Rights? Death Chamber Chaplains and the Law” Matthew P. Cavedon On December 22, 1849, twenty Russian dissidents stood on St. Petersburg square, waiting to be shot dead by their government. They had already been offered last rites. Several were even tied to a post. Suddenly, a messenger…
Image from Pixy This article is part of our “Reflecting on COVID-19” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. The COVID-19 crisis has strained religious institutions, along with the rest of our accustomed social order. In a few cases, it has also provoked the latest drama in the complex encounter between…
Image by Peter H from Pixabay As the United States nears the grim milestone of 150,000 American coronavirus deaths and cases surge in many parts of the country, a number of states are pausing or reversing their reopening plans. Many states are also weighing whether to put back in place the numerical limits on indoor…
Photo by George Becker on Pexels During the closing days of its 2019-20 term, the Supreme Court’s trilogy of rulings in the companion cases of Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and St. James School v. Biel, Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, and Espinoza v. Montana Department…
Photo by kkolosov on Pixabay This article is part of our “Reflecting on COVID-19” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Like most of us these days, we were sitting on the couch. My husband said grimly, “Let’s see what’s going on in the world…” and turned on the news. The…
Image by Pexels from Pixabay “The Blaine Amendment was ‘born of bigotry.”’ Reasonable people can certainly disagree over whether Chief Justice John Roberts’ forceful words in the opinion of the five-to-four judgement in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Taxation, which produced seven different opinions, was the stake through the heart of the anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments…