Religion & Law

Judicial Decision Making Does Not Require Judicial Activism: A Response to Prof. Althouse

Posted on October 23, 2006
Ann Althouse, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, has written an interesting (but flawed)  piece arguing that "judicial activism" on abortion will not disappear if the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade,  because courts will still have to address cases involving abortion...

The Truth About Pending Marriage Amendments

Posted on October 20, 2006
ADF Senior Counsel Chris Stovall has prepared this five page white paper (pdf file) addressing various arguments being made against several pending state marriage amendments. ...(read more)

NY Ruling Requires Religious Employers to Provide Insurance Coverage for Contraceptives: Secularism's Encroachment Continues

Posted on October 19, 2006
How Appealing has linked to today's ruling by New York's high court upholding a state statute that requires many religious organizations to provide health insurance coverage for contraceptives. It seems this ruling is further evidence of the threat that secularism poses to Christian organizations as Matt Bowman argued in a post yesterday...

Mike Manno: Can Bankruptcy Debtors Tithe?

Posted on October 18, 2006
An interesting question involving religious rights has been presented in the context of a bankruptcy case: Can debtors in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy tithe? Or does the new bankruptcy reform act (The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005) prohibit tithing? ...

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The Same-Sex "Marriage" Jackpot: Religious Censorship

Posted on October 18, 2006
Piercing through the rhetoric of "equality" and "exclusion," the real goal of same-sex "marriage" is becoming obvious:  religious censorship.  Long time mainstream journalist David Aikam makes this point explicitly.      Aikam correctly notes that the philosophic thrust underpinning same-sex "marriage" is dissimilar from the racial civil rights battles of the 1960s...

Secularism's Intolerance on Display in Europe

Posted on October 17, 2006
Secularism claims to be America's only hope for tolerance and civil calm. Yet two recent instances in Europe indicate that secularism is either unable or unwilling to tolerate religious freedom....(read more)

The Left's Redefinition of Judicial Activism

Posted on October 13, 2006
Over the last week, several judges respectfully rebuked Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's warning that pesky conservatives pose a grave threat to "judicial independence." Yet the entrenched legal establishment, invigorated by a conference at Georgetown that prompted this skirmish, is attempting to defend itself...

ADF Opposes Counterfeit Marital Institutions, Not the Granting of Benefits to Unmarried People

Posted on October 13, 2006
Skyrocketing health care costs have left many Americans in a perpetual state of fear that they or a loved one will face serious illness with inadequate or no health care coverage. Preying on these and similar fears, advocates of same-sex "marriage" argue that proposed state marriage amendments will undermine the ability of government and even private entities to grant benefits to unmarried people...

Why Won't the Left Engage in Honest Debate? The Real Issue is "Judicial Activism" Not "Judicial Independence"

Posted on October 12, 2006
Edward Lazarus has a commentary on Findlaw titled, The Key Issue of Judicial Independence: With Conservatives' Rhetoric Effective, and Supreme Court Justices Concerned, How Should Progressives Respond? Lazarus argues that so-called "Progressives" need to respond to conservative rhetoric attacking "judicial activism...

6th and 10th Circuits Issue SOB Rulings

Posted on October 12, 2006
This 10th Circuit opinion addresses those burden shifting issues that arise from City of Los Angeles v. Alameda Books, Inc., 535 U.S. 425 (2002). I warned municipalies to be prepared for that in yesterday's post. When they are properly prepared municipality's should win these...

Alan Sears: "Madder Than Ever: If They're Not Careful, the Anti-God Crowd May Get What They Want"

Posted on October 12, 2006
ADF President and General Counsel has this commentary on Townhall today. ...(read more)

7th Circuit Rejects Constitutional Challenge to Gary, Indiana SOB Ordinance

Posted on October 11, 2006
ADF has played a vital role in several of the U.S. Supreme Court cases that have become landmarks in this area of the law. (e.g., City of Erie, Z.J. Gifts, Alameda Books). These cases demonstrate how the law is impacted incrementally one crucial building block at a time ...

NY Times? Worldview on Religion: What's THAT Clause Doing in There?

Posted on October 11, 2006
Reading the New York Times' initial installment in their religion expose, I can?t help but share Prof. Garnett?s sense that the Times reporters ?just don?t get it.? . . . It seems as if the reporters are racking their brains to figure out why the Constitution even bothers to mention religion...

Arizona: Catholics Find Voting Guides a Test of Allegiance

Posted on October 10, 2006
Bishop Thomas Olmsted of the Phoenix diocese has published a forty-five page booklet titled "Catholics in the Public Square." . . . 28) How would you define a "candidate who is a faithful Catholic"? There are a large number of candidates or politicians in our country who label themselves as Catholic...

NY Times Suggests Religious Conspiracy on Third Circuit

Posted on October 10, 2006
The New York Times' current series of articles on religion has, so far, gone out of its way to understate the hostility that religion faces from elite institutions, while portraying religious freedom as an unfair special-interest handout. The latter is illustrated in one small way by the NYT's biased description of Petruska v...

David French: The Times Attacks Religion

Posted on October 10, 2006
Today, ADF Attorney David French has this post on the National Review Phi Beta Cons blog. He concludes: I suppose it is no surprise that the Times would write a multipart series designed to cast aspersions on the free exercise of religion.  After all, in the series they get to skewer two favorite enemies at once: individual rights and religious conservatives...

Schizophrenic Subterfuge: Why Abortion Became Legal

Posted on October 09, 2006
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."  (Declaration of Independence).   But wait:  if these words are true, and if this nation was founded to preserve these rights, how is it that some men--the preborn--lack protection and thus are precluded from pursuing Liberty and Happiness, precisely because their Life has...

Lopsided New York Times Piece Ignores Threats to Religious Liberty

Posted on October 09, 2006
The New York Times has published a slanted hit piece against religious liberty by Diana B. Henriques that makes it sound like well-connected religious groups have exempted themselves from state and federal laws that all other groups have to obey...

Gary McCaleb: Empty Threats to Pastors' Free Speech

Posted on October 09, 2006
ADF Senior Counsel Gary McCaleb joined forces with FRC's William Saunders to produce this commentary that appeared on WorldNetDaily on Saturday.   They argue: Pastors must realize that they have the right to guide their congregations through the difficult moral questions that face our society, such as abortion, stem-cell research/cloning and the meaning of marriage...

Chris Stovall: The Attack on Marriage Amendments, in 3-D

Posted on October 09, 2006
ADF Senior Counsel Chris Stovall has this op-ed on Townhall's Friday edition. The commentary makes a number of important points with regard to proposed state marriage amendments.  He inquires: "So what's a desperate marriage re-definer to do? Hand out 3-D glasses to the voters, and hope that Distraction, Distortion, and Disinformation will blur the issue...

Important Cases Under Consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court

Posted on October 06, 2006
Here is a list of important Supreme Court cases that the Supreme Court should be deciding whether to hear or not in the next few weeks. Most of these cases will be denied review by the high court, but two of them have piqued the interest of the justices and look like they may be cert grants...

Lambda Legal: The Art of the Non Sequitur

Posted on October 05, 2006
On October 4th a marriage debate sponsored by the Federalist Society at Texas-Wesleyan Law School was entitled:  ADF vs. Lambda.  What transpired was, in a word, befuddling, yet revealing.   I represented ADF and the case for marriage being the legal union of one man and one woman...

11th Circuit Upholds Conviction for Obscene Phone Calls

Posted on October 04, 2006
Howard Bashman's How Appealing blog has this post on today's ruling in United States v. Eckhardt, No. 05-12211 (11th Cir. Oct. 4, 2006). Bashman links to a post by Eugene Volokh on the question of obscenity prosecutions based on text...

First Monday in October--NOT!

Posted on October 04, 2006
Every law student and every Supreme Court watcher knows that something special occurs the "first Monday in October."  It is then that the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of the United States, convenes its new term.  Not so in 2006, however...

Mark C. Anderson: What?s Next? Routine Penicillin Shots?

Posted on October 02, 2006
The U.S. Center for Disease Control recently announced that it recommended regular, routine testing for the AIDS virus for all Americans ages 13 to 64, saying that an HIV test should be as common as a cholesterol check . . . America is headed toward a culture where the absence of personal responsibility is the norm and there is always a Plan B to clean up the mess...

Pornography Has Its Benefits Like Global Warming Causes A Decline in Rape

Posted on September 29, 2006
This article titled, Pornography Has Its Benefits, demonstrates nothing more than that in a free-press society, anyone may write whatever regardless of the absurdity of the substance....(read more)

The Left's Seminaries: How Times Change

Posted on September 29, 2006
ADF Attorney David French has this article on National Review Online....(read more)

Abortion: Is "Legal, But Rare" a Moral Option for Lawmakers?

Posted on September 28, 2006
Abortion is evil, but must it be illegal? Maybe that seems like a no-brainer to you, but several Christian professors argue that it might not be morally necessary to make abortion illegal. ...(read more)

Marriage: Nature's Child Protection Agency - Efforts of Georgia Chief Justice Leah Sears Deserve Praise

Posted on September 27, 2006
Looking for some constructive thinking on how to tackle this crisis, Chief Justice Sears "stumbled upon" the Institute for American Values on the Internet and attended its symposium on marriage and the law. She was so "transformed and energized" by the symposium that she led the Georgia Supreme Court to set up a Commission on Children, Marriage and Family Law, which she headed ...

Justice O'Connor is Worried, You're Angry at the Judiciary: Maybe You Should Appeal to the UN

Posted on September 27, 2006
"Judicial independence" is not absolute, but you wouldn't know it from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's commentary today in the Wall Street Journal sounding the courthouse alarm. Justice O'Connor's commentary, initially discussing legislative measures aimed at the judicial branch, quickly springboards into what can only be interpreted as a denunciation, if an implicit one, of any criticism of the judiciary...

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