Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Legal Spirits 074: Religion and the State in Japan

Nearly eighty years after Japan adopted constitutional provisions separating religion and the state, Japanese courts continue to grapple with a question familiar to American lawyers: how to enforce separation without severing law from history, tradition, and social practice. In this episode of Legal Spirits, Mark Movsesian speaks with Professor Eiichiro Takahata of Nihon University about the Japanese Supreme Court’s church–state jurisprudence, including its adaptation of U.S. Establishment Clause doctrine and its distinctive reliance on common-sense social understandings. The conversation offers a comparative lens on the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent turn away from abstract tests like Lemon and toward history and tradition—and highlights both the parallels and the limits of that convergence. Listen in!

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a civil-rights investigation after vandals broke into and desecrated Holy Innocents Catholic School in Long Beach, California, destroying religious statues, damaging the tabernacle, and causing extensive property loss.
  • The Archdiocese of New York alleges in a state-court filing that its longtime insurer, Chubb, secretly operated a victims’ advocacy website called the “Church Accountability Project” as part of a “shadow campaign” to pressure the archdiocese and gain leverage in ongoing litigation over insurance coverage for clergy abuse claims.
  • A year after Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde publicly urged President Donald Trump to show mercy toward immigrants and other vulnerable groups during an inaugural prayer service, she joined hundreds of clergy in Minneapolis protesting the administration’s escalating immigration enforcement and mass-deportation efforts.
  • Italian church and government authorities launched investigations after a restored cherub in Rome’s Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina appeared to resemble Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, sparking controversy about politicizing sacred art and drawing crowds that disrupted Mass.
  • As the Vatican appeals court reviews the high-profile financial scandal known as the “trial of the century,” defense lawyers are scrutinizing Pope Francis’ role, focusing on secret decrees he issued in 2019-2020 that granted prosecutors sweeping investigatory powers, including warrantless wiretapping, raising concerns about fairness and transparency.
  • A federal indictment filed in Wisconsin accuses four individuals of participating in a years-long scheme to defraud Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee by issuing fraudulent checks, fabricating work payments, and attempting to conceal the theft, with hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially subject to forfeiture.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Upcoming Panel: Displaying the 10 Commandments in Public School Classrooms

Later this month, the Mattone Center will co-host its annual symposium with the St. John’s Journal of Catholic Legal Studies. This year’s panel will address Roake v. Brumley, the 5th Circuit case on the constitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. We’ll hear from Christopher Lund (Wayne State) and Eric Rassbach (Becket Fund). We’ll post a video of the event later.

Space is limited, but if interested, please email Center Director Mark Movsesian at mark.movsesian@stjohns.edu. Thanks!

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • A student pro-life group from Noblesville School District filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, after the Seventh Circuit upheld the school’s refusal to permit the group to post flyers because of the political content. The action, E.D. v. Noblesville School District followed after the school suspended the students for several months.
  •  In Polk v. Montgomery County Public Schools, the Fourth Circuit affirmed a district court’s denial of a preliminary injunction sought by a substitute teacher who objected on free speech and free exercise grounds to the school district’s Guidelines for Student Gender Identity. The majority rejected plaintiff’s free exercise and free speech claims, concluding that the Guidelines are neutral and generally applicable and that they satisfy the rational basis standard.
  • Coastal Family Church filed an emergency motion seeking to stay a temporary injunction issued by a Florida state court which would bar the use of its strip mall unit for religious services.
  • The Third Circuit Court heard oral argument in Anash, Inc. v. Borough of Kingston. The lower court refused to grant a preliminary injunction to an Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva whose property was condemned, noting that plaintiff had not suffered irreparable harm, and that it was unlikely plaintiff would succeed on the merits of its challenge to zoning ordinances. Now, on appeal, the Yeshiva claims violations of RLUIPA and the due process clause.
  • A new report from Open Doors, a Christian advocacy organization, entitled World Watch List 2026, was released last week. The report assesses the persecution of Christians around the world, covering the period from October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025. Topping their list of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution are North Korea (#1), Somalia (#2), and Yemen (#3).
  • The NIH recently announced that it will no longer fund research involving human fetal tissue from elective abortions. Support for such research has declined steadily since 2019, while advances in breakthrough technologies “have created robust alternatives that can drive discovery while reducing ethical concerns.”
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Legal Spirits 073: A Short Take on the Minnesota Church Protest

Cities Church (MPR News)

In this episode—the first in a new series of Legal Spirits law-and-religion short takes—Mattone Center Director Mark Movsesian offers an initial assessment of the recent anti-ICE protest at Cities Church in Minnesota. He explains what is known so far, the legal issues the episode raises, and why those issues matter beyond this particular controversy. Whatever the merits of the underlying cause, he argues, intruding into a private worship service infringes a core understanding of the free exercise of religion. Listen in!

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard oral arguments in two cases challenging state laws that require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a case brought by a Jewish group seeking to recover a collection of sacred manuscripts that were seized by the Nazis and are now being held in Russia.
  • A Ukrainian Catholic Church in Pennsylvania has sued Collier Township, alleging religious discrimination after the town rejected plans for a church bell tower.
  • The European Court of Human Rights is hearing a case that seeks to remove Christian icons and symbols from public buildings in Greece.
  • The Vatican is currently evaluating the Trump Administration’s invitation to join the Board of Peace, which was established with the goal of rebuilding Gaza. 

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Legal Spirits 072: Religion at the “Constitutional Court of Europe”

In this episode, Mattone Center Director Mark Movsesian speaks with Judge Ioannis Ktistakis of the European Court of Human Rights about his career as an advocate, scholar, and international judge, and about emerging religious-freedom challenges facing Europe. They explore the role of the European Court—which Judge Ktistakis describes as “the Constitutional Court of Europe”—and examine how it supports the protection of fundamental rights across the continent. The conversation offers U.S. lawyers and law students a rare inside look at the Court’s internal workings and its approach to sensitive questions of law and religion.

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • The Department of Homeland Security announced that it will implement a rule that eases the requirements for foreign religious workers in the United States. 
  • In the European Court of Human Rights, the judge presiding over Tafzi El Hadri and El Edriss Mouch v. Spain held that Spanish courts did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to sanction a journalist who had written about Islamist indoctrination at a residential center for minors. 
  • In Brox v. Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority, the 1st Circuit ruled against employees seeking religious exemptions from a state board’s Covid vaccination policy.
  • In the United Kingdom, Catholic leaders are urging lawmakers to reject a proposed bill in Parliament that would allow for doctor-assisted suicides. 
  • As political protests and unrest grow in Iran, Christians in Iran report increasing anxiety about their vulnerable status.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Pin on Human Dignity

Very happy to announce the publication this month of Andrea Pin’s latest book, Dignity in Judgment: Constitutional Adjudication in Comparative Perspective (Oxford). Andrea is a Full Professor at Padua and one of the world’s leading scholars in comparative constitutional law–as well as a friend of the Mattone Center and frequent participant in our program. Always worth reading!

Here is the description from the Oxford website:

Dignity is a complex philosophical, theological, and constitutional concept. Courts have often progressively distanced the notion of dignity in constitutional law from its religious connotation to emphasize individual autonomy and self-determination. This process has made the notion of dignity less ambiguous, but narrower and more controversial.

Dignity in Judgment: Constitutional Adjudication in Comparative Perspective compares how the apex courts of Canada, Colombia, Egypt, the EU, and Israel operationalize the concept of dignity in their case law. While these countries share an Abrahamic faith and secularization tendencies, these legal systems host a plurality of societal values, and their courts have the reputation of having an activist approach to adjudication. This book offers an in depth-analysis of key decisions that reflect or use the concept of dignity, including capital punishment, antiterrorism measures, biotechnologies, and same-sex relations to build a model of human dignity that facilitates mutual understandings among and within legal traditions. It shows how religious and secular understandings of dignity have shaped its interpretation through the decades.

Insightful and thought-provoking, Dignity in Judgment explores the concept of dignity as it appears in the law by uncovering its character across different legal cultures and religious contexts.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

November Events at the Mattone Center

The Mattone Center is celebrating 15 years of leadership in law and religion studies. Here’s an article highlighting a rich slate of center events at the law school this past month, including a two-day international conference, a distinguished guest from the European Court of Human Rights, and a dynamic student reading group exploring C. S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity.”