In this short take, Mark Movsesian looks at the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision this week in Chiles v. Salazar, involving a Christian therapist who challenged Colorado’s ban on so-called conversion therapy for minors. Formally, Chiles is not a free exercise case. But religion is clearly in the background—a reminder that law-and-religion controversies are often worked out through the First Amendment’s speech protections. Listen in!
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Here is an interesting looking book from Oxford that explores religious freedom from the perspective of sociology: “A Sociology of Religious Freedom,” by Professors Olga Breskaya and Giuseppe Giordan of the University of Padua and James Richardson of the University of Nevada. I’m looking forward to reading the sections on defining religious freedom, in particular. Here’s the description of the book from the Oxford website:
In recent years, the relevance of religious freedom has spread well beyond academia, becoming a reference point for international relations, multi-level policy development, as well as interfaith negotiations. Meanwhile, scholarship on religious freedom has flourished on the boundaries of sociology, law, comparative politics, history, and theology. This book presents a systematic sociological analysis of religious freedom, bringing together classical sociological theories and empirical perspectives developed during the last three decades. It addresses three major questions involved in any sociology of religious freedom. First: considering its complex and controversial nature, how can religious freedom be defined? Second: what are the recurrent sociological conditions and relevant social perceptions that will foster an understanding of religious freedom in varying political, legal, and socioreligious contexts? And third, what are the mechanisms of social implementation of religious freedom that contribute to making it a fundamental value in a society? Olga Breskaya, Giuseppe Giordan, and James T. Richardson suggest that a sociological definition of religious freedom requires us to take into account historical, philosophical, legal, religious, and political considerations of a given society-and that the social dimensions of religious freedom are as important as the legal ones.
A couple of weeks ago, the en banc 5th Circuit vacated on ripeness grounds a lower court ruling that Louisiana’s law requiring placement of the 10 Commandments in public school classrooms violates the Establishment Clause. In this short take, Mattone Center Director Mark Movsesian explains what the case is all about, and the significance of the en banc court’s decision. Listen in!
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I’m very much looking forward to lecturing at the University of Padua next week on judicial review in the United States. Thanks to my friend, Professor Andrea Pin, for the kind invitation to meet with his law students. Details below. Friends of the Forum, please stop by and say hello!
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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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!
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.
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.”
The Mattone Center was delighted to host Judge Ioannis Ktistakis of the European Court of Human Rights for lunch with St. John’s Law students this week. Judge Ktistakis, who was at the law school for a conference on state neutrality and religious freedom, spoke with the students about his legal career, the work of the European Court, and current issues in religious freedom in Europe. Thanks to the judge for joining us!
This weekend at St. John’s Law, the Mattone Center will host a regional conference of the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ICLARS), “Education, Religious Freedom, and State Neutrality.” The conference will gather scholars and judges from Europe and the United States. Papers from the conference will appear eventually here on the blog. From the start, the Mattone Center has had a special interest in comparative law and religion, and we’re delighted to continue the tradition in this way
I’ve attached an abbreviated conference program below.