February 2021 Archives - Canopy Forum

“Vatican Criminal Reforms Ignore Glaring Problems Even as Jurisdiction Expands Worldwide” by Matthew P. Cavedon

Feb 26, 2021Canopy ForumConvictionCavedon, Matthew P., Criminal Justice, February 2021

Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Vatican Criminal Reforms Ignore Glaring Problems Even as Jurisdiction Expands Worldwide” Matthew P. Cavedon On February 16, Pope Francis announced changes to the Vatican’s criminal code. These alter court procedures to protect a few defense rights and make punishment more merciful. They come alongside recent expansions in the…

“On the Division of Rights” by John Milbank

Feb 24, 2021Canopy ForumSeriesFebruary 2021, Human Rights, Milbank, John

Photo by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash. This article is part of our “What’s Wrong with Rights?” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Contemporary discussions of rights tend to be about where to place a caesura between acceptable and unacceptable kinds of rights. This caesura is primarily a…

“Slaughtering Religious Freedom at the Court of Justice of the European Union” by Andrea Pin and John Witte, Jr.

Feb 16, 2021Canopy ForumSeriesFebruary 2021, Pin, Andrea, Witte Jr., John

Photo by Ravi Pinisetti on Unsplash. The New Age of Rights In the 1990s, the European Union (EU) seemed to be done. The Old Continent was pacified. Soviet imperialism had melted away. European dictatorships — from Portugal to Spain, from Greece to Romania — had ended. European citizens could travel from Italy to the Netherlands,…

“Which King’s Bay? Religion against the Rules in Nuclear Civil Disobedience” by Matthew P. Cavedon

Feb 15, 2021Canopy ForumConvictionCavedon, Matthew P., February 2021, Religious Freedom

Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Which King’s Bay? Religion against the Rules in Nuclear Civil Disobedience” Matthew P. Cavedon It is commonplace to understand religion as a building block of identity. We define our personalities in light of any number of characteristics – our religion, nationality, politics, ethnicity, sex, disabilities, and so on.…

“An Insurrection of ‘Law and Order’? The Cycle of Law-Preserving and Law-Making Violence” by J. Brent Crosson

Feb 11, 2021Canopy ForumSeriesCrosson, J. Brent, February 2021, Politics

Photo by Tom Gainor on Unsplash. This article is part of our “Chaos at the Capitol: Law and Religion Perspectives on Democracy’s Dark Day” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. We are shocked. Morally outraged. How could a U.S. president, touting “law and order,” incite a blatant attack on “American democracy”…

“Onward Christian Soldiers: Addressing American Christianity and Trump” by Deirdre Jonese Austin

Feb 10, 2021Canopy ForumSeriesAustin, Deirdre Jonese, February 2021, Politics

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash. This article is part of our “Chaos at the Capitol: Law and Religion Perspectives on Democracy’s Dark Day” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. “Onward, Christian soldiers!Marching as to war,With the cross of Jesus Going on before.” Though this began as a song for a…

“Nigel Biggar, What’s Wrong With Rights?” by Mark Hill QC

Feb 9, 2021Canopy ForumSeriesFebruary 2021, Hill, Mark, Human Rights

Photo by Mohammed Nasim. This article is part of our “What’s Wrong with Rights?” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Nigel Biggar’s publications are predictable, but never uninteresting: predictable in that he is unashamedly a conservative moral philosopher who self-defines as a professional Christian ethicist, a description which seems…

“Subjective Beliefs, Social Judgments, and Witch Killers” by Matthew P. Cavedon

Feb 8, 2021Canopy ForumConvictionCavedon, Matthew P., Ethics & Morality, February 2021

Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Subjective Beliefs, Social Judgments, and Witch Killers” Matthew P. Cavedon In a 1992 abortion decision, Casey v. Planned Parenthood, a plurality of the U.S. Supreme Court held: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and…

“America’s Constitutional Theology: Sovereignty and Grace In Bostock, Espinoza, and Our Lady of Guadalupe” by William E. Thro

Feb 5, 2021Canopy ForumEssaysFebruary 2021, Politics, Thro, William E.

Photo by Jorge Alcala on Unsplash. Constitutional Theology is the intersection of theology with constitutional theory. Constitutional Theology recognizes that the constitutional design will reflect society’s beliefs about the nature of humanity or those who rule. At the same time, it acknowledges that, if the constitutional system is to work, a faith’s interactions with the…

“Is Nigel Biggar’s ‘What’s Wrong with Rights?’ sufficiently realistic?” by Hans-Martien ten Napel

Feb 2, 2021Canopy ForumSeriesFebruary 2021, Human Rights, ten Napel, Hans-Martien

Image by Pexels from Pixabay. This article is part of our “What’s Wrong with Rights?” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. What’s Wrong with Rights is a superb book. If there is one subject that lends itself to interdisciplinary research, it is that of human rights. To the extent…