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Dear Friends,
It’s been another exciting and productive academic year at the Center for Law and Religion, and I’m pleased to share some highlights of our 2018-2019 activities and achievements:
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We convened Part III of our Tradition Project in Rome, “The Value of Tradition in the Global Context,” which featured a keynote address by Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito of the U.S. Supreme Court. The event, co-sponsored by Università LUMSA and Villanova University’s Eleanor M. McCullen Center for Law, Religion, and Public Policy, brought together judges, scholars, and journalists from the United States and Europe for two days of workshops on assigned readings. It capped a three-year research project on the continuing salience of tradition in contemporary law, politics, and culture.
We hosted the fourth biennial Colloquium in Law and Religion, an innovative seminar that brings outside jurists and scholars to St. John’s to present papers to selected students and faculty. This year’s participants included Judge Diane S. Sykes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, as well as Professors Philip Hamburger (Columbia), John D. Inazu (Washington University-St. Louis), Micah J. Schwartzman (University of Virginia), and Robert Louis Wilken (University of Virginia).
We launched a new podcast series, “Legal Spirits,” on cases and issues in law and religion in the United States and across the globe. Episodes have covered topics such as recent abortion legislation; religious hate speech; the anti-vaccination controversy; prayer in public school; and the Bladensburg Peace Cross case at the U.S. Supreme Court.
We continued to address a range of timely issues in law and religion online at the Law and Religion Forum. The blog’s content regularly draws media attention and has been cited in major law reviews. In addition to our daily Scholarship Roundup, the blog features bi-weekly Around the Web posts by our two student fellows, Anthony Nania ’20 and Daniel Vitagliano ’20.
We co-sponsored a symposium hosted by the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies on Professor Steven D. Smith’s book, Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (2018).
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Center Director Mark L. Movsesian published an article, Masterpiece Cakeshop and the Future of Religious Freedom, in the June 2019 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. He presented earlier versions of this article at conferences at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture and at George Mason University Law School’s Center for the Study of the Administrative State. He also participated as a commentator at the annual Federalist Society Faculty Division’s Junior Faculty Workshop.
Center Associate Director Marc O. DeGirolami published an article, The Sickness Unto Death of the First Amendment, in the June 2019 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. His article, The Traditions of American Constitutional Law, will be published by the Notre Dame Law Review. His article, First Amendment Traditionalism, will be published by the Washington University Law Review. His book chapter, On the Uses of Anti-Christian Identity Politics, was published in Religious Freedom, LGBT Rights, and the Prospects for Common Ground (William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Robin Fretwell Wilson, eds.), Cambridge University Press (2018).
Professor DeGirolami spent a semester at the James Madison Program in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. While there, he worked on several scholarly projects involving constitutional theory and the history of malice as a legal concept. He also made presentations at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture and at George Mason University Law School’s Center for the Study of the Administrative State, as well as at Loyola University Maryland, The King’s College, and the AALS Law and Religion Section conference in New Orleans.
Professor DeGirolami co-authored an editorial (with Professor Kevin Walsh) in The New York Times, “Conservatives, Don’t Put Too Much Hope in the Next Justice.”
Professors Movsesian and DeGirolami continued to contribute commentary for First Things, the Liberty Fund’s Library of Law and Liberty, and other online sites, and to appear in media interviews and podcasts.
Center Board Member Mary Kay Vyskocil was nominated to be a U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York and Center Board Member Richard J. Sullivan was sworn in as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
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Thank you for being part of the Center community. We have much more planned for the coming year, so please follow us at the Law and Religion Forum, and on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. 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 on the Law School's online giving page and click on Centers and Programs and highlight the Center for Law and Religion.
Mark L. Movsesian
Director
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