Mark and I have recorded another in our podcast series, this time on the “prison beard case,” Holt v. Hobbs, argued this week at the Supreme Court. We discuss the claim and the oral argument, and make some predictions. To get our other podcasts, click here.
Around the Web This Week
Some interesting law and religion stories from around the web this week:
- A federal bankruptcy court in New York has rejected a RFRA defense to a fraudulent conveyance recovery action. The court found that the relief sought by the trustee did not burden the defendant’s free exercise of religion.
- Inmates of a private prison in Arizona, who argue that they are being denied their right to practice their Native Hawaiian religion, have been granted class action certification by a U.S. District Court.
- The California Catholic Conference has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights, arguing that the California Government has violated federally guaranteed civil rights by ordering Catholic universities to institute health insurance plans that cover abortions.
- Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., one of the litigants in the Hobby Lobby case, was granted a permanent injunction against the Contraception Mandate.
- The Supreme Court denied all seven petitions for certiorari asking the Court to rule on the constitutionality of state same-sex marriage bans.
- The Supreme Court granted certiorari to a case involving workplace religious freedom. Specifically, the case involves a Muslim woman who was denied a job at Abercrombie and Fitch because her hijab violated corporate policy.
- The Seventh Day Adventist Church had filed an amicus brief urging the court to hear the case in hopes that “the Supreme Court will take a friendly view toward Title VII” of the Civil Rights Act.
- Delegates from 40 different countries, including scholars, government officials, and religious and civic leaders, met this week at Brigham Young University to discuss religious freedom, diversity and secularism.
- A rally was held in the capital of Estonia protesting a same-sex marriage bill that is currently being ‘fast-tracked’ through parliament.
- Ireland is set to have a referendum on whether to abolish its blasphemy laws. Blasphemy is considered to be a punishable offense under Ireland’s 1937 constitution.
- The Spanish tradition of awarding state honors to Roman Catholic icons has triggered a law suit after the Gold Medal of Police Merit was awarded to a statue of Mary “for sharing police values such as dedication, caring, solidarity and sacrifice.”
- Canada’s Religious Freedom Ambassador has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of persecuting Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Muslim Tatars in part of a plan to prop up the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church..
Gómez-Rivas, “Law and the Islamization of Morocco under the Almoravids”
This month, Brill Publishing releases “Law and the Islamization of Morocco under the Almoravids: The Fatwās of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd to the Far Maghrib” by Camilo Gómez-Rivas (University of California, Santa Cruz). The publisher’s description follows:
Law and the Islamization of Morocco under the Almoravids: The Fatwās of
Ibn Rushd al-Jadd to the Far Maghrib investigates the development of legal institutions in the Far Maghrib during its unification with al-Andalus under the Almoravids (434-530/1042-1147). A major contribution to our understanding of the twelfth-century Maghrib and the foundational role played by the Almoravids, it posits that political unification occurred alongside urban transformation and argues that legal institutions developed in response to the social needs of the growing urban spaces as well as to the administrative needs of the state. Such social needs included the regulation of market exchange, the settlement of commercial disputes, and the privatization and individualization of property.
Burak, “The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire”
In December, Cambridge University Press will release “The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire” by Guy Burak (New York University). The publisher’s description follows:
The Second Formation of Islamic Law is the first book to deal with the rise
of an official school of law in the post-Mongol period. The author explores how the Ottoman dynasty shaped the structure and doctrine of a particular branch within the Hanafi school of law. In addition, the book examines the opposition of various jurists, mostly from the empire’s Arab provinces, to this development. By looking at the emergence of the concept of an official school of law, the book seeks to call into question the grand narratives of Islamic legal history that tend to see the nineteenth century as the major rupture. Instead, an argument is formed that some of the supposedly nineteenth-century developments, such as the codification of Islamic law, are rooted in much earlier centuries. In so doing, the book offers a new periodization of Islamic legal history in the eastern Islamic lands.