This has been a productive year for our Center, featuring regular Legal Spirits podcasts; our biennial colloquium in law and religion; a student reading society; and articles and appearances by Center Co-Directors Marc DeGirolami and Mark Movsesian. You can read all about it in our annual year-end message, here. Happy Holidays!
Movsesian Named Co-Editor of the Journal of Law and Religion
We are delighted to announce that the Journal of Law and Religion (Cambridge University Press) has named Center Co-Director Mark Movsesian to its board of editors. Professor Movsesian will assist the interdisciplinary, peer-review journal in selecting and developing articles for publication.
“I am grateful for the invitation and am delighted to join the Journal‘s editorial board,” Professor Movsesian said. “I look forward to helping the journal continue to explore issues at the intersection of law and religion, both domestically, in the United States, and across the globe.”
More information about the Journal and its editorial board is here.
Moscow State University Roundtable
I was delighted to speak at a roundtable on law and religion at Lomonosov Moscow State University this morning, along with faculty colleagues from Russia, Greece, Canada, Italy and Israel. Comparative studies add so much to the understanding of church-state issues, and it is always striking how the same issues come up in so many cultures–though not the same answers. The questions from other scholars and the student participants were great. Thanks for Prof. Gayane Davidyan at Lomonosov for inviting me!
UPDATE: For anyone interested, Lomonosov has now posted the YouTube Video of the event:
Christianity and Conservatism’s Multiethnic Future
At the First Things site today, I have an essay on how a broad, ecumenical Christianity will feature in a new, multiethnic conservative movement. Here’s a sample:
The factors Salam identifies no doubt figure in minorities’ increasing affinity for conservative politics. But I think his explanation misses another important factor: conservative Christianity. The media typically presents conservative Christians as monolithically white, but that is not the case. For example, about one-quarter of evangelicals are members of racial and ethnic minorities, and Republicans apparently did very well among them. According to Gaston Espinoza, a researcher at Claremont McKenna College who conducted a survey of Latino voters, it was “Latino evangelicals” who “helped Trump to do better than anyone expected in Texas … and in Florida.”
I don’t know of studies that analyze minority voters in terms of church attendance, but in the general population, religious observance correlates with voting for the GOP, and that pattern presumably holds for many minorities as well. According to the AP Vote Cast Survey, people who attend church regularly—up to a few times a month—broke solidly for Trump, 54 percent to 45 percent. People who attend church once a week or more voted 61 percent for Trump. By contrast, people who never attend church went strongly for Biden, 63 percent to 32 percent. (This last figure is consistent with surveys that reveal that more than two-thirds of Democrats “never attend religious services.”) To be sure, differences exist among minority communities; black Christians, for example, continue to vote Democrat in very large numbers. Still, it is reasonable to think that, with respect to minorities, as with respect to the American public generally, the religiously observant tend to vote Republican.
If Republicans are to become a multiethnic, middle-class movement, a popular, ecumenical Christianity of the sort I observed at the Museum of the Bible will likely have an important place in it. In fact, the religious identity of the movement need not be exclusively Christian. Americans are famously non-sectarian when it comes to public religion, and it’s possible to imagine a political coalition of the traditionally religious from all faith communities. Although good studies are difficult to find, some suggest that Orthodox Jews increasingly vote Republican. And President Trump drew one-third of Muslim voters in 2020, a large increase over 2016.
You can read the whole essay here.
Law & Religion Roundtable at Lomonosov-Moscow State (Nov. 25)
A programming note: on Wednesday, November 25, I will participate in a roundtable on law and religion sponsored by the Faculty of Law at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The roundtable, organized by Lomonosov Professor Gayane Davidyan, will take place online starting at 17:30 Moscow time. Visitors are welcome. Please use the You Tube link here. The roster for the roundtable, along with the titles of the presentations, is below. Stop by and say hello!
- Mark Movsesian, Frederick A. Whitney Professor, Co-Director of Center for Law & Religion, St. John’s Law School, United States, Church-State Cases at the US Supreme Court in 2020
- Lina Papadopoulou, Associate Professor, Law School, Academic Coordinator of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence “European Constitution and Religion”, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, God and the Constitution in a country (Greece) with a prevailing religion
- Andrea Pin, Associate Professor, Department of Public, International and Community Law, University of Padua, Italy, The Constitution as an ID
- Kathryn Chan, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, Canada, The source and scope of religious freedom in Canada
- Xavier Barre, Ph.D in Law, Avocat au barreau de Paris, Member of New York Bar and Advocat of Moscow Regional bar
- Anton Kanevsky, Associate Professor of Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, Attorney in Jerusalem, The Divine Name in Earthly Affairs: Non-specific Talmudic Legal Principles and Israeli Practice
- Gayane Davidyan, Associate Professor, School of Law, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Director Center of Law and Religion, Can God be Constitutional?
Don Drakeman’s New Book: “The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory”
Congratulations to Center board member Don Drakeman for his new book, available later this month, The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory: Why We Need the Framers (CUP 2020)! Don has been making the case for an approach to originalism that looks to original meaning as well as original intention for several years. I know that I have benefited from his work greatly over the years.
More later, when I’ve had a chance to read the book. But for the moment, wonderful news.
Inaugural Session of the CLR Reading Society: Antigone
Mark and I hosted the first session of our Reading Society last night, an occasion for students to gather with us and one another in the evening, over a beverage, to discuss a classic work. Our first choice was Antigone, by Sophocles. It was an enormous success. We were both very impressed with the depth of insight our students brought to this masterpiece of literature. Truly, we learned a lot from our students.
Stay tuned for the next gathering, in the spring.
JCLS Symposium on A Light Unseen: A History of Catholic Legal Education
Congratulations to the staff of the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies for the publication of these papers connected to the symposium last February on Professors John Breen and Lee Strang’s forthcoming book, A Light Unseen: A History of Catholic Legal Education. The volume contains contributions by several law school deans and professors reflecting on the project.
Movsesian on the Karabakh Crisis
For those who are interested, at the Law & Liberty site today, I have an essay on the Karabakh War, now one month old. I argue that the war represents a civilizational clash between democracy and dictatorship and suggest what American can do to ease the crisis. Here’s an excerpt:
America should consider a range of options to help ease the Karabakh crisis, none of which would involve America as a participant in the conflict. First, it can send humanitarian assistance to the region, indirectly if necessary. Second, it can suspend the direct or third-party sale or transfer of military equipment and technology to Azerbaijan. America provided $100 million of military aid to Azerbaijan just in 2018 and 2019, much more than to any other country in the region, ostensibly to help Azerbaijan defend itself against Iran. With Azerbaijan openly purchasing weapons from Iran, that strategy seems counterproductive. America can also suspend military sales and transfers to Turkey while Turkey continues its belligerent policy in Karabakh and elsewhere. If this doesn’t work, America could impose sanctions on both countries.
Finally, America can continue to push Azerbaijan to cease hostilities, return to negotiations, and reach a diplomatic settlement of Karabakh’s status. (After agreeing to one US-brokered ceasefire last weekend, Azerbaijan immediately broke it.) A comprehensive settlement has been in sight for decades: Armenia returns most captured territories to Azerbaijan and allows refugees to return in exchange for some sort of independence for Karabakh. Michael Rubin argues in The National Interest that America should support this idea, which has a precedent in Kosovo: “remedial secession” to protect an endangered minority. After weeks of cluster bombing, not to mention the history of pogroms and other crimes, Karabakh Armenians can never be safe under Azeri rule.
You can read the whole essay here.
Video of Last Week’s Panel on the Caucasus
For those who are interested, the St. John’s University Institute for International Communication has posted a video of last week’s panel, “The Crisis in the Caucasus,” on the war in Karabakh. I participated, along with Alek Gevorkyan (St. John’s), Artyom Tonoyan (University of Minnesota), and Siobhan Nash-Marshall (Manhattanville College). Kudos to St. John’s Law 2L Isabel Arustamyan for helping to put it all together. The link is below: