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…
Hindu Temple in the United States via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). Every Hindu-American lawyer at some point in their career is called to justify their decision to represent certain clients: How can one represent a client they find morally “repugnant” while walking the path of dharma in pursuit of the ultimate goal of human…
View of the Vatican City Gardens by Patrik Kunec (CC BY-SA 4.0). My earlier column reviewed Washington’s recently passed Senate Bill 5375 that would have required Roman Catholic priests to violate their sacred duty to maintain the seal of confession by reporting those who committed the heinous act of child abuse to state authorities. Based…
The Healing of Tobit by Bernardo Strozzi (CC0 1.0). There is ongoing discourse about the relationship between patient agency and external factors in health outcomes. It can be difficult to identify the multifaceted variables that answer the question of why one person becomes ill and not another. While individual action does certainly play a role,…
Russell Senate Office Building by Architect of the Capitol (US-PD). During his second term, President Barack Obama attempted to restart the Israel-Palestine peace process, following in the footsteps of every president since George H.W. Bush. Like other attempts, it fell apart quickly, much to the frustration of all. In April of 2014, then U.S. Secretary…
Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City via Wikimedia Commons (CC0-01). Washington’s controversial Senate Bill 5375, “An ACT Relating to the duty of clergy to report child abuse and neglect,” scheduled to go into effect on July 27, 2025, removes the legal protection for Roman Catholic priests under the seal of confession when dealing with mandatory sexual…
Photo of Mike Nichols at the National Film Society Convention by Alan Light (CC BY 2.0). In the fall of 1966, Hollywood studio magnate Jack Warner and a young first-time director, Mike Nichols, faced independent, but interlocking conundrums. The trouble centered on the film adaptation of Edward Albee’s award-winning play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—the…
ChatGPT Rendering of AI via Wikimedia Commons (PD). In the spring of 2024, the state of Louisiana faced a critical legal juncture. The newly elected Governor Jeff Landry had begun to speak of the need for a new Louisiana Constitution and to gesture toward the new constitution being drafted by the end of the regular…
John Trumbull’s painting, Declaration of Independence, (PD-Art). In a recent newsletter to Atlantic subscribers, editor Jeffrey Goldberg refers to the cover story by Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer. They attempt to answer, he says, a simple question: How did Trump rise from political ruin in 2021 to seize the commanding heights of government and the world…
Tripura Sundari Hindu Temple via WikiMedia Commons (CC0 1.0) In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the United States Supreme Court held that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and overruled both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In doing so, the Court puts state governments in charge of regulating…