When Shrugging is Not an Option
- May/June 2025
- April 30, 2025
On April 9, 2010, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens tendered his resignation letter to the president.1 Within hours, considerable commentary and conjecture deluged the Internet. Legal pundits and law professors agreed that the 90-year-old justice was in some respects irreplaceable. His closely reasoned opinions have helped fashion the very warp and woof of our
READ MOREZealous watchfulness against fusion of secular and religious activities by Government itself, through any of its instruments but especially through its educational agencies, was the democratic response of the American community to the particular needs of a young and growing nation, unique in the composition of its people. Justice Hugo Black, for the majority,
READ MOREIn November 2009 the Catholic Church in Italy was faced with a "Crucifix Conundrum." Catholic crucifixes adorn every room of the public school system. In northern Italy, Soile Lautsi, a mother of two, filed a complaint against the Catholic practice, claiming it violated the secular intent of public schools in Italy and denied her the
READ MOREThis article is part four in a four part series. Read Part 3 The previous articles in this series on religious wars examined the ferocious 13 decades from the Protestant Reformation (c. 1520) to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), in which Europe was torn asunder by wars resulting from the post-Reformation fragmenting of Christendom. However,
READ MOREOne of its least important decisions ever in the jurisprudence of ‘church and state’&” is how Nathan Diament of the Orthodox Union described the Supreme Court’s decision in Salazar v. Buono, which is only the latest twist in a legal saga that has been going on for more than eight years. What would cause a
READ MOREIn the "Live Free or Die" state they don't do things by halves, except when neither half agrees with the other. In a current case involving Amanda Kurowski, the 10-year-old Christian daughter of divorced parents who has been forced by a judge to stop homeschooling and attend public school, some say parental rights are the
READ MOREThe date was June 5, 1917, the first day of the draft. Sousa’s Band struck up &”Stars and Stripes Forever&” and the 6,000 in attendance at the American Medical Association Convention in New York City rose to their feet as former president Theodore Roosevelt walked across the stage. The United States had tried to avoid
READ MOREThis article is part three in a four part series. Read Part 2 Read Part 4 The second part of this five-part series on Europe’s wars of religion told the story of how, from the 1520s until approximately 1650, the greatest nations in Christendom—France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Sweden, the Dutch Republic, and Britain—were all caught
READ MOREThe way President Barack Obama sees things, Americans should be able to find unity in prayer—even if they disagree on the details of faith and politics. That’s true in the current debates about health care, poverty, and even gay marriage, he said at this year’s National Prayer Breakfast. &”Surely we can agree to find common
READ MORE