Happy to announce that the latest episode in our animated video series, “Landmark Cases in Religious Freedom,” is now available on our YouTube channel. This episode covers Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940), in which a Jehovah’s Witness was convicted of inciting a breach of the peace after playing an anti-Catholic phonograph record in a Catholic neighborhood. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Cantwell’s conviction was unconstitutional, establishing for the first time that the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause applies to state laws through the Fourteenth Amendment. The case demonstrates how the Constitution protects offensive religious speech absent physical threats or an imminent danger to public order. This precedent remains crucial in today’s debates about religious “hate speech” and the balance between free expression and public safety. Take a look!
Berner on Educational Pluralism
I’m late getting to this, but I did want to note Ashley Rogers Berner’s most recent book on educational pluralism, Educational Pluralism and Democracy: How to Handle Indoctrination, Promote Exposure, and Rebuild America’s Schools (Harvard). Ashley, a professor of education at Johns Hopkins, is a longtime friend of the Mattone Center who participated in our Tradition Project several years ago. She has written a great deal about how different perspectives, including religious, can benefit K-12 education, and is always worth reading. Here’s the description of the book from the publisher:
In Educational Pluralism and Democracy, education policy expert Ashley Rogers Berner envisions a K–12 education system that serves both the individual and the common good. Calling for education reform that will enable US public schools to fulfill the longstanding promise of American education, Berner proposes a radical reimagining of both the structure and content of US public school systems. She urges policymakers to embrace educational pluralism, an internationally common model in which the government funds diverse types of schools that deliver more universal content.
Providing an incisive assessment of democratic education throughout the world, Berner argues that educational pluralism can build students’ exposure to diverse viewpoints and shared knowledge within distinctive school communities. She shows how pluralism steers a middle path that enables equitable access, promotes academic excellence, and avoids the zero-sum games that characterize US education policy. Pluralism, she observes, will ultimately serve democracy by defusing polarization and increasing social mobility, political tolerance, and civic engagement.
In this thought-provoking proposal, Berner lays out a roadmap for big-picture reform, expertly delineating the mechanisms through which educational norms can change. A practical conclusion describes concrete moves that advocates can pursue to garner support and advance new legislation.
Around the Web
Here are some important law-and-religion stories from around the web:
- This past Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission. Catholic Charities alleges that Wisconsin violated the First Amendment by denying the organization a religious exemption from the state’s unemployment compensation law.
- In Turman v. Abyssinian Baptist Church, a New York federal district court held that the ministerial exception barred the court from considering a sex discrimination claim by a female clergy member who sought employment as senior pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church.
- Oklahoma recently filed a complaint in an Oklahoma federal district court seeking to enjoin the Freedom from Religion Foundation from sending demand letters to Oklahoma public school officials requesting that they refrain from teaching about the Bible and from allowing students a moment of silence to reflect, meditate, pray, or engage in any other silent activity.
- In Dimeo v. Gross, a Pennsylvania appellate court held that a trial court’s refusal to delay the start of a trial by one day so that the defendant could observe Yom Kippur did not violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
- China has recently imposed new restrictions that ban foreign clergy residing in the country from establishing religious organizations, preaching without authorization, founding religious schools, producing or selling religious books, accepting religious donations, or recruiting Chinese citizens as religious followers.
Center Co-Hosts Symposium on Oklahoma Charter School Case
Last night, the Center co-hosted its annual symposium with the St. John’s Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, with guests Professors Michael Helfand of Pepperdine and Michael Moreland of Villanova. A great discussion about the Oklahoma Catholic Charter School case, which SCOTUS will hear later this month. I’ll post the video when it becomes available.