Picture by Adam Kring on Unsplash. “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (1921) “By nonetheless granting relief, the Court goes astray. . . . That renders the Court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all.”Justice Elena Kagan, Louisiana v. American Rivers (2022) Hitler’s Lawyer About a decade ago, the name…
Baianas de Acarajé / October 18, 2007 / Wikimedia Commons This article is part of our “Clothed in Religion: Law and Religious Attire/Garb” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. The government of Brazil has widely recognized and protected acarajé — a food that originates from Candomblé (an Afro-Brazilian religion), as…
Banning Black Gods:Law and Religions of the African Diaspora Danielle Boaz This excerpt is adapted from Banning Black Gods: Law and Religions of the African Diaspora and was recently published by Penn State University Press (2021). Introduction In 2003, Toronto police officers suspected that two Jamaican-Canadian brothers were involved in a series of murders that plagued…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “REVIEW: Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, The Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom by Spencer W. McBride” Peter Wosnik Now a world-wide faith with over 16 million adherents, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (popularly known as Mormonism) began as a small, radical…
Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the Waning of Mainline Protestantism Nicholas Pruitt The following is a modified excerpt from Nicholas Pruitt’s Open Hearts, Closed Doors (2021), used with permission from New York University Press. At the outset of the twentieth century, white Protestants still held a tight grasp on the cultural and social resources…
Image: Wedding celebration, Jerusalem 1981 / Drkup(IMJ) / CC BY-SA 4.0 This article is part of our “Clothed in Religion: Law and Religious Attire/Garb” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. One of the most interesting social developments in Jewish legal and cultural interactions with Western society is the sheitel,…
The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority & Community in US IslamTazeen Ali The following is a modified excerpt from Tazeen Ali’s The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority & Community in US Islam (2022), out now from New York University Press. The Women’s Mosque of America (WMA) is a multi-racial women-only mosque in Los Angeles that…
Image adapted from The Fabulous Creature Buraq by unknown author and a painting by Nar Singh (Public Domain) A virtual conference sponsored by Canopy Forum and the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory (CSLR) featuring scholars, experts and practitioners who will examine the many religious traditions of South Asia and their diverse…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “The Potential Religious Context of The Fourth Amendment” Peter Wosnik James Madison first introduced the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to Congress in 1789. Since that time, the Fourth Amendment has become a bedrock in criminal procedure in American constitutional law. Thousands of state and federal cases…
Religion and US Empire: Critical New Historiesedited by Tisa Wenger and Sylvester Johnson “Ordinary Affects of U.S. Empire”, A review by Candace Lukasik “American imperialist culture has seeped into Egyptian blood.” – Kirollos We sat on the back patio, eating watermelon in the heat of the sun on a chilly March day in 2021. Kirollos…