Tribal Law Archives - LAW AND RELIGION FORUM

Posted on July 31, 2017July 31, 2017 by Liam Ray

Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

Palestinian officials have asked that Muslim worshipers return to the Al-Aqsa mosque after Israeli security forces removed new security equipment that had inspired mass protests.
Dozens of residents of a Pakistani village have been arrested as the central government escalates its response to an incident in which the village’s tribal council ordered a man to commit a sexual assault.
Charlie Gard, the infant at the center of a controversy over his medical care that had attracted the attention of the pope and other religious leaders, has died.
Sam Brownback, the governor of Kansas, has been nominated to serve as the Trump Administration’s ambassador for international religious freedom.
The Department of Justice has filed an amicus brief in which it takes the position that Title VII does not protect against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
A Michigan state judge has issued a preliminary injunction suspending a state law that would have provided funding to private schools to help them comply with state-imposed mandates.

Posted on September 20, 2012 by

Gregorian, “The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880-1946”

This January, Stanford University Press will publish The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880-1946 with a new introduction by Vartan Gregorian (President of Carnegie Corporation of New York). The publisher’s description follows.

Long heralded as a seminal work on the history of Afghanistan, this book traces the evolution of the modern Afghan state by studying the politics of reform and modernization that started in 1880 through World War II. This history is marked with persistent attempts by the Afghan ruling dynasty to assert and strengthen its rule—both against the great imperial powers, as well as over the various Afghan tribes within its territory.

In this reissue, Vartan Gregorian offers a new introduction that places the key themes of the book in the context of contemporary events, addressing questions of tribalism, nationalism, Islam, and modernization, as well as the legacies of the Cold War and the various exit strategies of occupying powers. The book remains as distinctive today as when it was first published. It is the only broad work on Afghan history that considers ethnicity as the defining influence over the course of the country’s history, rather than religion. In light of today’s ongoing struggle to develop a coherent national identity, the question of Afghan nationalism remains a particularly significant issue.

Posted on March 5, 2012March 5, 2012 by

Carpenter on Individual Religious Freedoms in American Indian Tribal Constitutional Law

Kristen A. Carpenter (U. of Colorado Law School) has posted Individual Religious Freedoms in American Indian Tribal Constitutional Law. The abstract follows.

Written on the 40th Anniversary of the Indian Civil Rights Act, this article engages with a prominent critique of individual rights in tribal communities, namely that they effectuate the ‘assimilation’ of tribal people, values, and institutions. On the one hand, because American Indian religions emphasize collective values and experiences, this critique is particularly apt in the religion context, and the imposition of individual rights norms recalls the federal government’s historic efforts to destroy tribes by eradicating tribal religious practices. Moreover, in many tribal communities, religion is conceptualized and practiced not in terms of ‘rights’ but rather ‘duties’ to other people, plants, animals, natural features, and the ceremonies themselves. On the other hand, some Indian tribes have historically recognized personal liberties in spiritual practices, and now consider it an obligation of self-government to protect individual interests in religion. This article explores these themes, particularly as they manifest in tribal constitutional law, which reveals a broad spectrum of rights and duties, individual and collective protections. The article also elaborates on several ways that tribes recognize individual rights in the context of tribal culture, namely using tribal custom as a basis for interpreting positive law on individual religious rights, maintaining separate institutions for the resolution of legal disputes about religion, and engaging in constitutional reform to change religious rights provisions that are inconsistent with tribal values. In the final analysis, the article observes that that while many challenges remain, tribal governments often try to facilitate individual and collective interests in religious freedom today.