Over the last three decades of work in the fields of law, religion, and human rights, I have been privileged to work with fellow scholars with a range of views on what is known in the United States as “religious freedom.” In my work with scholars outside the U.S., I have also been schooled in…
Recently, in my part of the world, as in many places across the United States, debates have raged over the enforcement of mask mandates as a measure against COVID-19. My representative, Congressman Clay Higgins, described masks early on as “bacteria traps.” This assertion was apparently based on his former career as a police officer, in…
Following the murder of eight people in Atlanta, six of them Asian-American women, news broke that the killer Robert Aaron Long had been expelled from his church. At first, speculation about the killer’s motives had focused on the Asian-American identity of the majority of his victims. Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, members of…
No one has heard a peep from this chorister in nearly a year. Trained in law, religion, and the law of religious freedom, there was a time early in the pandemic when I wondered whether the social distancing mandates being adopted by state and, in some cases, municipal governments would be experienced by some as…
The No Religious Test Clause within Article VI, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution is a special text in the field of law and religion, and especially American constitutional law of religion and state. The No Religious Test Clause comes immediately after the Oath or Affirmation Clause requiring that Members of Congress and the…
Congressman Clay Higgins, representing Louisiana’s Third Congressional District, recently drew attention for his response to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, the congressman addressed a letter to Louisiana’s Governor John Bel Edwards decrying and denouncing restrictions on group gatherings as a violation of freedoms of religion and assembly under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Then,…
Cover Image: U.S. Congressman Mike Pompeo in 2011. Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0 On May 30, 2019, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards—the only Democratic governor of a deep-south state—signed into law a “heartbeat bill” banning abortion after six weeks. In defending his decision, which contravenes the national Democratic Party’s platform plank on securing reproductive health and…
Cover Image: Little Rock Nine Memorial. Little Rock, AR. Wikimedia Commons. We have witnessed a curious pattern emerging in many recent confirmation hearings for federal judicial nominees. Beginning first with the Senate confirmation hearings of nominee Wendy Vitter, recently appointed to a federal judgeship in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of…