A brief overview of an important new collection of essays on great Christian jurists in Italian history from the Middle Ages until today.

This is a brief introduction to a book that explores both historical and contemporary Christian sources and dimensions of global law and includes critical perspectives from various religious and philosophical traditions. In this book, two dozen leading scholars discuss the constituent principles of this new global legal order historically,…[Read more]

A brief preface to this volume of Christianity and Global Law, one of several new introductions to Christianity and law commissioned by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. Each volume is an anthology of some two dozen chapters written by leading scholars. Each volume has historical, doctrinal, and comparative…[Read more]

This Article outlines the human rights theories of nineteenth-century abolitionist and civil rights leader James Pennington. Born into slavery in Maryland, Pennington escaped North and became the first African American to attend Yale. As an ordained Presbyterian clergyman, educator, orator, author, and activist, he adapted traditional Protestant…[Read more]

This article responds to Mark Jordan, Brian Bix, Michael Broyde, Robin Fretwell Wilson and Jonathan Chaplin who offered learned reviews of my volume, Church, State, and Family: Reconciling Traditional Teachings and Modern Liberties (Cambridge University Press, 2019). This volume marshals historical, philosophical, jurisprudential, theological, and…[Read more]

Concluding remarks on the compiled essays in Russell Sandberg’s edited volume, Leading Works in Law and Religion, along with a reflection on the broader global development of the field of law and religion.

This Article explores the role of metaphors in shaping our thought and language in general, and in the fields of law and reli- gion in particular. Drawing on modern cognitive theorists like George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, the Article distinguishes and il- lustrates the roles of “orientation,” “structural,” and “ontologi- cal” metaphors in everyday…[Read more]

The eighteenth-century American founders believed that religion is special and deserves special constitutional protection, and that all peaceable faiths must be drawn into the constitutional process and protection. The founders introduced six constitutional principles for the protection of religious freedom – freedom of conscience, free exercise o…[Read more]

Este artículo compara la protección de la libertad religiosa contenida en la Primera Enmienda de la Constitución de los Estados Unidos con las principales normas internacionales de derechos humanos sobre la materia. Especialmente, se analiza el Pacto Internacional de Derechos Civiles y Políticos de 1966, la Declaración de las Naciones Unidas sobr…[Read more]

This brief Article analyzes the traditional Protestant pedigree of the political teachings of the Christian coalition that formed the heart of the “moral majority” movement of the Reagan era. While applauding the coalition’s efforts to bring moral reform to American society, the Article criticizes one if its intellectual leaders, Ralph Reed, for i…[Read more]

Some scholars portray John Calvin as a champion of religious liberty and human rights. Others view him as a rigid and brutal theocrat. This article shows that neither interpretation does justice to Calvin’s complex and evolving views of spiritual and political liberty. In his early writings, Calvin distinguished sharply between the spiritual and p…[Read more]

Some scholars portray John Calvin as a champion of religious liberty and human rights. Others view him as a rigid and brutal theocrat. This Article shows that neither interpretation does justice to Calvin’s complex and evolving views of spiritual and political liberty. In his early writings, Calvin distinguished sharply between the spiritual a…[Read more]

A new war has developed for the salvation of souls in Russia, as local and foreign religious groups battle in Russia over the right and power to proselytize. This is, in parti a legal war just as it is a religious war, as the Russian government has developed favorite denominations and oppressed others. After the Soviet Union crumbled, president…[Read more]

A new war has developed for the salvation of souls in Russia, as local and foreign religious groups battle in Russia over the right and power to proselytize. This is, in parti a legal war just as it is a religious war, as the Russian government has developed favorite denominations and oppressed others. After the Soviet Union crumbled, president…[Read more]

This Article analyzes John Calvin’s reformation of the life, law, and lore of the marital family in sixteenth-century Geneva. Calvin’s early efforts in the 1530s and 1540s were focused on the law of marital formation, maintenance, and dissolution. Particularly his 1545 Marriage Ordinance was famous for requiring parental consent, church con…[Read more]

This Article analyzes John Calvin’s reformation of the life, law, and lore of the marital family in sixteenth-century Geneva. Calvin’s early efforts in the 1530s and 1540s were focused on the law of marital formation, maintenance, and dissolution. Particularly his 1545 Marriage Ordinance was famous for requiring parental consent, church con…[Read more]

The United States Constitution (1787) and its twenty-seven amendments (1791- 1992) prohibit governmental deprivations of life, liberty, and property without due process of law; guarantee equal protection of the law and freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly; provide procedural protections in criminal and civil trials; and maintain…[Read more]

In an impressive series of books, articles, briefs, and judicial opinions spanning nearly half a century, John T. Noonan, Jr. has established himself as one of the great oracles of religious liberty in twentieth-century America. The Lustre of Our Country is both a confirmation and a proclamation of the depth of his conviction and erudition on this…[Read more]

This brief Article introduces the highly original theory of equality of two distinguished Catholic legal scholars. They root their argument in a reconstructed theory that human beings are created with the divine invitation to moral self-perfection, however impossible this state is for anyone to achieve in this life. Humans can still, however,…[Read more]

Massachusetts was the last of the original 13 American states to disestablish religion, having been founded in the early seventeenth century as a bastion of Puritanism. The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 moved part way toward disestablishment by guaranteeing freedom and equality to all peaceable private religions but also retaining what…[Read more]