Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Mattone Center Hosts First Directors Summit

On January 23, 2025, the Mattone Center for Law and Religion hosted the inaugural Center Directors Summit, a gathering of directors of law and religion centers and clinics across the United States. Participants at the event, which took place at the New York Athletic Club, included the directors of centers and clinics at Brigham Young, Emory, Harvard, Notre Dame, Pepperdine, St. John’s, Stanford, and Villanova Universities, The Catholic University of America, and the University of Texas.

The day began with three private roundtables addressing mission, scholarship, curricula, and programs. Participants spoke about the role of law and religion centers and clinics and the benefits they can provide for law professors, students, and the public more generally. 

The summit continued with two panel presentations for Mattone Center student fellows, board members, alumni, and friends, moderated by Judge Richard Sullivan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, at which participants shared key insights from the earlier roundtables. You can find a video of the panels here:

It was great to get together with colleagues and friends to talk about our successes, challenges, and plans for the future. I came away from the summit with ideas for our program here at St. John’s, and I’m sure that’s true of the other participants as well. So many law schools in the US have law and religion centers and clinics, yet no one has thought before to bring the directors together to share notes and see how we can continue to provide a benefit legal education in the US. This summit was a great first step, and I hope it will continue on a rotating basis.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

The Mattone Center Launches a YouTube Channel & Video Series

I’m delighted to announce that this month the Mattone Center has launched a new YouTube channel. The platform features diverse content, including episodes of the Legal Spirits podcast, a new video series, Landmark Cases in Religious Freedom, panels and interviews , and event highlights. The channel aims to promote engaging discussions and provide valuable insights into the intricate relationship of law and religion. 

One standout feature of the new channel is the animated series, Landmark Cases in Religious Freedom, which examines conflicts between law and religious conscience in American jurisprudence. Each video provides historical context, explains key legal arguments and court decisions, and analyzes the broader societal impact of these pivotal cases. 

The first video in the series, “People v. Philips: An Early Case About Free Exercise,” explores an early precedent from New York on the priest-penitent privilege. It has resonated strongly with viewers, amassing over 30,000 views and counting in the short time since its launch. Here it is:

The response to this first video shows that we are serving a real need. People want to understand how courts balance legal principles and religious faith. As an academic institution, the Mattone Center is uniquely positioned to provide that understanding, and YouTube, which reaches millions of people around the world, offers a new opportunity for us to do so. Scholars shouldn’t confine themselves to academic circles; we should engage with the wider world. That’s exactly what we aim to achieve with this channel.

Please consider subscribing to the channel, so you can receive updates as new material becomes available. Thanks!

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A City on a Hill

I’d like to thank the members of our Law & Religion Reading Group who turned out last night for a wonderful discussion of John Winthrop’s famous essay, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630), the source of the oft-repeated saying that America is “a city on a hill.” A 400-year old Puritan text came to life. Look for a new Legal Spirits podcast on the subject soon!

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Reading Group to Discuss John Winthrop

Photo: Partnership of Historic Bostons

Later this month, the Mattone Center Reading Group will meet at St. John’s to discuss one of the most famous essays in American history, John Winthrop’s “Model of Christian Charity.” Winthrop wrote the essay on the ship Arbella in 1630, while he and other Puritan colonists were on their way to Massachusetts. The essay is the source of the much quoted metaphor–itself a Biblical reference–of America as a “city upon a hill.” But what did Winthrop mean, exactly? And how do his words apply today, in a very different America than he could have imagined. Please join us (registration required)! Details below.

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Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Movsesian at ICLARS Next Month

I’m greatly looking forward to participating in next month’s ICLARS conference at Notre Dame Law School. I’ll be on a panel, “Status, Conduct, and Message,” along with Steven Collis of the University of Texas and Amy Sepinwall of the University of Pennsylvania. We’ll try to make sense of some of the Court’s recent religious freedom cases. Details in the conference program, below. Friends of the Mattone Center, please stop by and say hello!

ICLARS 2024 Program with logos first draft for print (JMT 20092024) (1)Download
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

“Liberation” and Ethnic Cleansing

Following on yesterday’s Legal Spirits podcast, I was interviewed today by GB News on UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s appalling statement about Azerbaijan’s “liberation” last year of Nagorno-Karabakh. In fact, Baku ethnically cleansed Karabakh of its 120,000 Christian Armenian inhabitants a year ago, in violation of an order from the International Court of Justice, which ruled that Baku was violating the international anti-racism treaty, and in defiance of a statement from the US that ethnic cleansing would not be tolerated. Well, listeners to the podcast will know my skepticism about international human rights law, which seems to matter only when great powers think it’s in their interest. But statements like Lammy’s are outrageous and incomprehensible.

You can listen to the GB News report at the link below:

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Welcoming our Mattone Center Student Fellows for 2024-2025

L-R: Mesrobian, Cadet, Xenakis, and Markowitz

They have been working hard on the blog and the podcasts since the summer, but now that the term has begun, I’d like to formally welcome our Mattone Center Student Fellows for 2024-2025: Noa Cadet ‘3L, Riki Markowitz ‘2L, Kalina Mesrobian ‘2L, and Panayiotis Xenakis ‘3L. You can read more about them in the Law School’s press release, here. Welcome aboard, gang!

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

“The Best Man,” Sixty Years Later

For people who are interested, over at Law & Liberty, I have an essay on the 60th anniversary of Gore Vidal’s classic film on presidential nominating conventions, 1964’s “The Best Man.” I’ve always loved the film, which captures some of the fun and banality of democratic politics–as well as its deeply cynical, even nihilistic side. Very relevant this election year. Here’s an excerpt:

This year marks the 60th anniversary of perhaps the greatest political film of all time, 1964’s The Best Man. Based on a play of the same name by Gore Vidal, who also wrote the screenplay, The Best Man tells the story of a deadlocked political convention at which two candidates vie for their party’s presidential nomination. Sixty years on, the film remains tremendously entertaining: clever, suspenseful, with an exceptional cast. The dialogue is outstanding. Considering what we have witnessed in the current presidential campaign—and it’s only August—Americans might again find interest in Vidal’s depiction of the backroom intrigue that determines a nomination.

The Best Man holds up for its mordant but profound observations about American democracy. There’s not much idealism here. The film’s most principled character has flaws that make him unfit to lead and the ultimate nominee is a “nobody” whose lack of record is his best quality. But there are important lessons about the sort of person who seeks high office in a democracy—and the sort of person high office requires. Perhaps surprisingly, given that Vidal was a man of the Left and had a rather acid personality, The Best Man offers a basically fair, even forgiving, depiction of progressives and conservatives. Neither are wholly good nor wholly bad, just human.

You can read the whole essay here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

On the Oklahoma Charter School Decision

Earlier this week, in a much-watched case, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a charter school, St. Isidore of Seville, is unconstitutional under state and federal law. In a post at the Volokh site today, I argue that this ruling was probably correct. As a charter school, St. Isidore is a hybrid, a cross between a public and a private school, and that makes its legal position complicated. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s not quite as clear as the Oklahoma court makes it seem, but the decision is probably correct, at least respecting the federal constitutional claims. Legally speaking, St. Isidore is caught in a dilemma—a dilemma that its hybrid nature as a charter school creates. If St. Isidore qualifies as a public school, there’s an obvious Establishment Clause problem. St. Isidore argued that it shouldn’t be seen as a public school, but as an independent contractor. But the Oklahoma statute specifically provides that charter schools are “public.” And that’s not just a matter of form, but also substance. As a charter school, St. Isidore is funded entirely by the state, must take all students who apply, and must comply with curricular and other requirements that don’t apply to private schools.

On the other hand, if St. Isidore is a private actor, the US Supreme Court’s recent free exercise cases may not help it too much. In Carson and Espinoza, the Court ruled that the state cannot exclude private religious schools from tuition assistance programs simply because they are religious—that would violate the schools’ right to practice their religion. That seems correct to me. But in those cases, the Court stressed that public funds went to private schools through the filter of parental choice. Parents who received tuition assistance designated which schools would receive the money.

St. Isidore would be entirely free, by contrast, and Oklahoma would be funding the school directly. True, the amount of money St. Isidore would receive would depend, presumably, on the number of students it enrolled—and that would depend on parental choice. But the state is more in the foreground (and the parents more in the background) in this case than in either Carson or Espinoza, and it feels different, somehow.

You can read the whole post here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Movsesian on Munoz on Original Meaning

Happy to report that my review of Phillip Munoz’s excellent new book on the original meaning of the religion clauses, Religious Liberty and the American Founding, is up on the website of the Journal of Law & Religion (Cambridge). Munoz persuasively argues that the Framers disagreed on precisely what the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment protect, apart from the freedom to worship. And, I argue, that’s why original meaning can’t provide closure on many of our debates about religious liberty today.

Here’s an excerpt:

Religious Liberty and the American Founding is a pleasure to read. Muñoz writes well and exceptionally clearly, and his book will appeal both to the educated public and to constitutional lawyers and scholars who spend their time immersed in doctrinal debates. He offers a wealth of detail on the drafting and ratification of the religion clauses. And the story he tells is a persuasive one. History is argument without end, but Muñoz’s basic point that the framers disagreed on the precise meaning of establishment and free exercise in the First Amendment but understood those terms in light of their background conception of religious liberty seems entirely plausible. Precisely because the framers could not agree on what the natural right of religious liberty itself entailed with respect to specific government policies, though, it is not clear how helpful a natural-rights construction of original meaning can be in resolving specific constitutional disputes.