The Mojave Desert cross is not the only Establishment Clause icon to make a comeback this week. Roy Moore, the former Chief Judge of the Alabama Supreme Court, who famously defied a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse, has won election to his old job. In 2003, a state judicial ethics panel removed Moore from office for failing to comply with the federal court order. This week, the voters of Alabama sent Moore back to his former position. Moore told his supporters that he would continue “to stand for the acknowledgment of God,” but has promised not to try to restore the monument.
Corteguera, “Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition”
This month, University of Pennsylvania Press will publish Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition by Luis R. Corteguera (University of Kansas). The publisher’s description follows.
On July 21, 1578, the Mexican town of Tecamachalco awoke to news of a scandal. A doll-like effigy hung from the door of the town’s church. Its two-faced head had black chicken feathers instead of hair. Each mouth had a tongue sewn onto it, one with a forked end, the other with a gag tied around it. Signs and symbols adorned the effigy, including a sambenito, the garment that the Inquisition imposed on heretics. Below the effigy lay a pile of firewood. Taken together, the effigy, signs, and symbols conveyed a deadly message: the victim of the scandal was a Jew who should burn at the stake. Over the course of four years, inquisitors conducted nine trials and interrogated dozens of witnesses, whose testimonials revealed a vivid portrait of friendship, love, hatred, and the power of rumor in a Mexican colonial town.
Temperman (ed.), “The Lautsi Papers: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Religious Symbols in the Public School Classroom”
This November, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers will publish The Lautsi Papers: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Religious Symbols in the Public School Classroom edited by Jeroen Temperman (Erasmus University Rotterdam). The publisher’s description follows.
Increasingly, debates about religious symbols in the public space are reformulated as human rights questions and put before national and international judges. Particularly in the area of education, legitimate interests are manifold and often collide. Children’s educational and religious rights, parental liberties vis-à-vis their children, religious traditions, state obligations in the area of public school education, the state neutrality principle, and the professional rights and duties of teachers are all principles that may warrant priority attention. Each from their own discipline and perspective––ranging from legal (human rights) scholars, (legal) philosophers, political scientists, comparative law scholars, and country-specific legal experts––these experts contribute to the question of whether in the present-day pluralist state there is room for state symbolism (e.g. crucifixes in classroom) or personal religious signs (e.g. cross necklaces or kirpans) or attire (e.g. kippahs or headscarves) in the public school classroom.
Gruber & Haugbolle, “Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East: Rhetoric of the Image”
In June 2013, The Indiana University Press will publish Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East: Rhetoric of the Image edited by Christiane J. Gruber (University of Michigan) and Sune Haughbolle (University of Copenhagen). The publisher’s description follows.
This timely book examines the power and role of the image in creating a rhetorical lexicon for political Islam. The essays explore the role and function of image making to highlight the ways in which the images “speak” and what visual languages mean for the construction of Islamic subjectivities, the politics of power, and the formation of identity and belonging. Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East addresses aspects of the visual in the Islamic world, including the presentation of Islam on television; the internet and other digital media; banners, posters, murals, and graffiti; and the satirical press, cartoons, and children’s books.
Shiffrin, “The Religious Left and Church-State Relations”
This August, Princeton University Press will publish a paperback edition of The Religious Left and 
Church-State Relations by Steven H. Shiffrin (Cornell Law School). The cloth edition was published in 2009. The publisher’s description follows and a book review by the Center’s own Assistant Director Marc O. DeGirolami can be found here.
In The Religious Left and Church-State Relations, noted constitutional law scholar Steven Shiffrin argues that the religious left, not the secular left, is best equipped to lead the battle against the religious right on questions of church and state in America today. Explaining that the chosen rhetoric of secular liberals is poorly equipped to argue against religious conservatives, Shiffrin shows that all progressives, religious and secular, must appeal to broader values promoting religious liberty. He demonstrates that the separation of church and state serves to protect religions from political manipulation while tight connections between church and state compromise the integrity of religious institutions.
Videos of Rome Conference Now Available
On June 22 in Rome, CLR co-hosted a conference, State-Sponsored Religious Displays in the US and Europe, with the Department of Law at Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta (LUMSA). Videos of the panels are now available below. Papers will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies.
Conference Introduction
- Silvio Ferrari (Università di Milano – Facoltà di Giurisprudenza)
Session 1: Cultural or Religious? Understanding Symbols in Public Places
- Thomas C. Berg (U. of St. Thomas School of Law)
- Carlo Cardia (Università di Roma Tre – Facoltà di Giurisprudenza)
- Eduardo Gianfrancesco (LUMSA – Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza)
- Francesco Margiotta Broglio (Università di Firenze – Facoltà di Scienze Politiche)
Session 2: The Lautsi Case and the Margin of Appreciation
- Monica Lugato (LUMSA – Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza)
- Marc O. DeGirolami (St. John’s U. School of Law)
- W. Cole Durham, Jr. (Brigham Young U. Law School)
Session 3: State‐sponsored Religious Displays in Comparative Perspective
- Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit)
- Paolo Cavana (LUMSA – Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza)
- Mark L. Movsesian (St. John’s U. School of Law)
- Sophie C. van Bijsterveld (Tilburg U. School of Humanities)
Virginia Ten Commandments Case Settles
A followup to a case we noted in October. Last month, a federal district court in Virginia approved a settlement in a case challenging the constitutionality of a Giles County high school’s display of the Ten Commandments. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, the school will replace the display with a page from a history textbook that mentions the Commandments without actually quoting them. As we discussed in October, the display pretty clearly ran afoul of existing Supreme Court case law, which is particularly strict about religious symbols in public schools.
It is “up to” you, Governor
The Rhode Island legislature recently sent a bill to Governor Lincoln Chafee designating a latin cross which is part of a war memorial in Woonsocket, Rhode Island as having attained “secular, traditional, cultural, or community recognition and/or value,” notwithstanding the cross’s “recognizable identification with a known or established religion.”
Governor Chafee has indicated that the bill will become law without his signature. The story above reports that the Governor stated that it is “up to” “the courts” to determine whether the cross violates the Establishment Clause: “‘[P]assing the bill does not change the fact-finding mission in which the courts must engage to resolve these questions.”
Actually, Governor, it is “up to” you, too. Article VI of the Constitution is plain that “[t]he Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution . . . .” Of course, opining on questions of this kind is politically delicate. But it is quite wrong for the Governor to suggest that it is not explicitly his responsibility as the chief executive officer of the state of Rhode Island to form an opinion based on his own “fact-finding” about the constitutionality of this symbol.
(h/t Religion Clause blog)
Blogging the Rome Conference: State-Sponsored Religious Displays in the US and Europe
Last week, CLR hosted a conference in Rome on state-sponsored religious displays, along with our colleagues at the Department of Law at LUMSA. The conference, held at LUMSA’s main campus in the Borgo, drew about 100 people and included panels on the cultural and religious meanings of symbols, the Lautsi case and the margin of appreciation, and a comparison of American and European jurisprudence. I moderated one panel and spoke on another, so I couldn’t take notes on everything. Here are some notes on a few of the day’s very fine presentations, though. Selected papers will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies.
Silvio Ferrari (University of Milan) opened the conference by offering a framework for understanding state-sponsored religious displays. After describing the three models European nations have adopted with respect to such displays, Ferrari noted the central problem: “religious” symbols often have a variety of meanings, both religious and cultural, that one cannot easily disentangle. He suggested relying on Jurgen Habermas’s distinction between an “informal” public space, like a town square, and an “institutional” public space, like a courtroom. In the former, Ferrari argued, religious symbols might be permissible; in the latter, they should be prohibited. He concluded by stressing the benefits of the debate on state-sponsored religious symbols. The debate itself is important, he argued, because it forces people to take religious symbols seriously as a public question.
In the day’s second panel, Monica Lugato (LUMSA) gave a paper on the conceptual roots of the margin of appreciation doctrine, which played a central role in the Grand Chamber’s judgment in Lautsi. She explained how the doctrine, which grants national governments discretion in applying the rights guaranteed by the European Convention, follows from basic rules of treaty interpretation and coheres with the principle of subsidiarity. My CLR colleague Marc DeGirolami followed with a paper on the shift from an abstract, single-value jurisprudence to one that considers the many possible meanings of religious symbols. For example, he argued, the Latin cross has many possible references; he praised the new recognition of the multiple meanings of religious symbols in American and European jurisprudence. Cole Durham (BYU) ended the panel with a call for an authentic “pluralistic secularity,” a midway point between “confessionalism” and “fundamentalist secularism,” that would allow national majorities to celebrate their culture but not impose religion on minorities. Durham argued that the Grand Chamber’s judgment in Lautsi struck an appropriate balance in this regard.
Conference: The Changing Faces of Religion and Secularity
A quick announcement for a wonderful looking conference to be held at Harvard Law School on June 7-8, The Changing Faces of Religion and Secularity, organized by the Universidad de Navarra in Spain. The program is international in scope and includes some terrific speakers — Mary Ann Glendon, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Russell Hittinger, among many others. CLR Director Mark Movsesian will be presenting his paper, Crosses and Culture: State-Sponsored Religious Displays in the United States and Europe.