Dear Friends:

It’s been a productive 2024-2025 academic year at St. John’s Denise ’90 and Michael ’91 Mattone Center for Law and Religion, and we’re pleased to share some of the highlights and achievements with you.

MEDIA PRODUCTIONS

New YouTube Channel & Video Series
The Mattone Center has launched a YouTube channel anchored by its brand-new animated video series, Landmark Cases in Religious Freedom. The Landmark Cases series—at 250K views and counting!—brings to life important court decisions on religious liberty. Each episode offers accessible historical context, legal analysis, and a look at how these cases shape our understanding of religion and the Constitution today. The channel also features the Legal Spirits podcast; recordings from Center-sponsored panels, conferences, and guest lectures; and other content exploring the intersection of law and religion in American public life.

Podcast
The Legal Spirits podcast is going strong, with its 66th episode and an audience that’s tuning in from around the globe at 19K listens and counting! From blockbuster Supreme Court decisions to hot-button church-and-state controversies, Legal Spirits dives deep into the legal and cultural issues shaping the future of religious freedom. We also take you inside America’s law schools, where the next generation is grappling with these debates in real time.

Blog
The Law and Religion Forum blog remains a go-to destination for scholars, journalists, and students alike. Curated by Mattone Center Director Mark Movsesian, the blog features sharp analysis, guest insights, and two popular weekly features: the Scholarship Roundup, a guide to the newest and most important academic work in the field, and Around the Web, a curated collection of the latest news and debates shaping law and religion worldwide.

CENTER NEWS

Events
The Center Directors Summit brought together directors of law and religion centers and clinics from U.S. law schools. The event, the first ever of its kind, featured roundtable discussions and panel presentations on mission, scholarship, curricula and programs. Schools represented included Brigham Young, Emory, Harvard, Notre Dame, Pepperdine, St. John’s, Stanford, and Villanova Universities, The Catholic University of America, and the University of Texas.

Together with the St. John’s Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, the Mattone Center hosted its annual symposium on law and religion. This year’s event featured a panel on Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, the Catholic charter school case currently before the Supreme Court, with Professors Michael Helfand (Pepperdine) and Michael Moreland (Villanova), as well as Mark Movsesian (St. John’s).

Moot Court Competition 
For the first time ever, the Center sent a team to the annual International Moot Court Competition in Law and Religion in Rome. Co-coached by Mark Movsesian and St. John’s Law Alumni Association President Jim Herschlein ‘85, the Center’s student fellows argued a case on Indigenous land rights before a panel representing the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Reading Group
The Mattone Center’s Reading Group continues to bring students, alumni, and friends together to discuss law and religion in works of fiction and non-fiction. This year, about 30 students and faculty participated in a discussion of John Winthrop’s famous City on a Hill sermon, focusing on its themes and continuing impact in U.S. politics and culture. 

Student Fellows
Each year, the Mattone Center selects St. John’s Law students to serve as student fellows and assist with its programs. This year’s fellows were Noa Cadet ‘25, Riki Markowitz ‘25, Kalina Mesrobian ‘26, and Panayiotis Xenakis ‘25. We’re grateful for their hard work, including their contributions to the Law and Religion Forum blog, the Legal Spirits podcast, and the International Moot Court Competition in Law and Religion.

DIRECTOR NEWS
Mark Movsesian presented a paper, “Status, Conduct, Belief, and Message: The Wedding Vendor Cases,” at the Seventh International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies Conference at the University of Notre Dame and at a symposium, In Search of Common Ground, hosted by the Chicago-Kent College of Law. The paper will appear in a forthcoming symposium issue of the Chicago-Kent Law Review. He continued to write for opinion journals, including Law & Liberty and the Volokh Conspiracy. Professor Movsesian also gave interviews to media outlets and continued to serve as co-editor of the Journal of Law and Religion (Cambridge).

THANK YOU!
Thank you for being part of the Center community. We have much more planned for next year, so please follow us on YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Instagram. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions for future programs. If you would like to support our ongoing research, programs, and student fellowships, please make a gift online (from the designation menu, first select Centers and then select Denise ’90 and Michael ’91 Mattone Center for Law and Religion).