Senate Revisions to House Proposed Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, National Archives (US-PD) On October 15, Canopy Forum, hosted by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, will be organizing an online book symposium regarding Donald L. Drakeman’s upcoming book, to be published November 2026, titled The Free Exercise Clause and the Rights of Conscience (Harvard University Press,…
Page from original working manuscript of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, held by Yale University (US-PD) This article is part of a forthcoming series on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In political and legal discourse, American exceptionalism denotes the idea that the United States is a distinctive political community, both…
The U.S. Constitution on display at the National Archives of the United States by APK (CC-BY-SA 4.0) This article is part of a forthcoming series on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This contribution addresses two questions of legal and political theory in connection to constitutionalism in general, and in the United States…
Senate Revisions to House Proposed Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, National Archives (US-PD) On October 15, Canopy Forum, hosted by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, will be organizing an online book symposium regarding Donald L. Drakeman’s upcoming book, to be published November 2026, titled The Free Exercise Clause and the Rights of Conscience (Harvard…
Chapel dedication at Porter-Gaud School. Courtesy of Porter-Gaud School, used with permission. Recently, a private school in Charleston, South Carolina, dedicated its new chapel. The school has long had an Anglican/Episcopal connection, and its board of directors includes both the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and the bishop of the Anglican Diocese…
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…
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…
“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,…
St. Mary’s Academy, Image Courtesy of SNJM Archives. This week, the first of the state of Oregon’s public schools will open their doors to a new school year. Teachers will reenter their classrooms to unfamiliar students, filled with the emotions of the fall’s start. In the next few weeks, the state’s private schools will join…
Why So Many Churches Are Turning To Bankruptcy to Reorganizeby Pamela Foohey The following is an introductory essay to Pamela Foohey’s forthcoming book, Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive (University of Chicago Press, 2026). Foohey’s book will be published on September 21, 2026. I never meant to write a book…