History Archives - Canopy Forum

“Gods, Judges, and Presidents: Trifunctional Archetypes in American Law and Government” by Charles Lincoln

Sep 11, 2026Canopy ForumLiterature HighlightsConstitutional Law, History, Lincoln, Charles, North America (Geography), September 2026

Gods, Judges, and Presidents and the Sacred Grammar of Constitutional Authorityby Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln IV The following is an introductory essay to Charles Lincoln’s recently published book, Gods, Judges, and Presidents: Trifunctional Archetypes in American Law and Government (Bloomsbury Press, 2026). The American Constitution is usually introduced as a diagram. Congress legislates, the President executes, and…

“Going Dutch with the American Founders” by John Witte, Jr.

Sep 2, 2026Canopy ForumEssaysConstitutional Law, Europe (Geography), History, North America (Geography), September 2026, Witte Jr., John

Last page of the Union of Utrecht, 1579, Nationaal Archief (US-PD) This article is part of a forthcoming series on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning volume on The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn pointed to five major sources that helped drive the American revolutionaries…

“Traces of Ancient Rome in the Declaration of Independence” by Umberto Vincenti

Aug 26, 2026Canopy ForumSeriesAugust 2026, Constitutional Law, Europe (Geography), History, North America (Geography), Vincenti, Umberto

“Gallery of Views of Ancient Rome” by Giovanni Paolo Pannini, 1758 (US-PD-Art). This article is part of a forthcoming series on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The issue of the cultural foundations of the Founding Fathers and of American constitutionalism in general is, perhaps, more apparent than real and, in any case,…

“The Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom: Human Rights in the United States and Europe” by John Witte Jr. and Andrea Pin

May 13, 2026Canopy ForumLiterature HighlightsHistory, May 2026, Pin, Andrea, Religious Freedom, Witte Jr., John

The Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom: Human Rights in the United States and EuropeJohn Witte Jr. and Andrea Pin Material excerpted from The Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom: Human Rights in the United States and Europe by John Witte Jr. and Andrea Pin © 2025 by the University of Notre Dame. Excerpted with permission from…

“Sisters and State Building: The Sisters of the Good Shepherd and Carceral Infrastructure in 19th Century Colorado” by Hennessey Star

Feb 27, 2026Canopy ForumEssaysChristianity, February 2026, Federal Indian Law, History, North America (Geography), Star, Hennessey

Aerial view of the House of the Good Shepherd via Denver Public Library (Public Domain). When the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project endeavored to study the “oldest” women’s prison in the United States they pointed not only to the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls—the oldest state penitentiary built exclusively for women—but the Home of the…

“Saint Death v. Church and State: The Political Economy of Santa Muerte in Mexico” by R. Andrew Chesnut

Feb 6, 2026Canopy ForumEssaysCatholicism, Chesnut, R. Andrew, February 2026, History, Latin America (Geography)

Photo of Santa Muerte iconography. Photo taken by author. In March 2009, Mexican soldiers razed more than forty public shrines to Santa Muerte in Nuevo Laredo and Tijuana, pulverizing cement and plaster images of La Huesuda under the treads of military bulldozers. The spectacular demolitions—repeated in subsequent years, including in Coahuila under President Enrique Peña…

“The Making of National Ecclesiastical Law in the Eighteenth-Century Kingdom of Naples” by Matteo Carmine Fiocca

Jan 8, 2026Canopy ForumEssaysCarmine Fiocca, Matteo, Catholicism, Europe (Geography), History, January 2026

Carlo III di Borbone visiting the Pope Benedetto XIV in the coffee-house of the Quirinale, Rome (US-PD). As the eighteenth century unfolded, theories aimed at limiting the Roman Catholic Church’s authority, shaped over the previous centuries and influenced by humanist and natural law thinking, started to really take hold in the religious policies of some…

“Alignment to Nothing: AI and the Moral Power of the Silence to Be Human” by Kevin Lee

Aug 14, 2025Canopy ForumEssaysAugust 2025, Ethics, History, Lee, Kevin, North America (Geography)

Monks in Majestic Bhaga Valley, India by Vyacheslav Argenberg © (CC BY 4.0). Breonna Taylor was an emergency room technician in Louisville, Kentucky. Her coworkers said she was calm under pressure, good with patients. She was twenty-six. On the night of March 12, 2020, after her shift, she fell asleep in her apartment watching a…

“More a Church than a Crown? The Spanish Inquisition and Las Casas’s Legal Thought” by Matthew Cavedon

Jul 17, 2025Canopy ForumEssaysCavedon, Matthew P., Christianity, Europe (Geography), History, July 2025

The Inquisition Tribunal by Francisco Goya (PD-Art). Bartolomé de Las Casas (c.1484–1566)—the first Catholic bishop of the Americas—commented on many of the controversies of the Spanish Empire of his day. While he never evaluated the Inquisition in writing, his life intersected with it several times. (Curiously, though Las Casas was possibly descended from conversos, or…

“The Sovereign Within: Self-Knowledge and Virtuous Governance” by Sunil Rao

Jul 9, 2025Canopy ForumEssaysAsia (Geography), Ethics, Europe (Geography), History, July 2025, Rao, Sunil

School of Athens, painting by Rafael (US-PD). Throughout history, rulers facing crises have often turned to oracles, sages, and spiritual guides for wisdom. More than 2,500 years ago, King Croesus of Lydia consulted the Oracle at Delphi on whether to wage war against Persia. The Oracle replied that if Croesus attacked, he would “destroy a…