This article examines Pope Francis's understanding of the relationship between church and state, the ends of civil authority, and the importance of religious liberty. It argues that Francis challenges claims made by legal and religious scholars that civil authority must be neutral as to religious ends. Francis, the article contends, uses the categories of idolatry and solidarity as opposing ends that are cultivated by civil authorities caring for, most notably, the economy and the environment. Both are religious. Idolatry is the solipsistic pursuit of created things as an ultimate end and solidarity entails living in communion with God and others. The article further considers how these arguments have shaped Francis's views on religious liberty. Francis points to the importance of civil authorities respecting conscientious objection, the desirability of cultivating healthy pluralism, and religious liberty as securing the end of solidarity. This presents two challenges: first, to recent legal scholarship questioning the special importance of religious liberty; and second, to the exercise of religious liberty itself. If religious liberty is protected for the end of solidarity, can it be exercised wrongly? The article concludes by considering the Supreme Court's 2014 Hobby Lobby decision.

It is often noted that the term “ts'daqah” is derived from the Hebrew word for “justice.” However, this observation is rarely accompanied by a historically valid definition of the sort of justice assumed to inform Jewish sources on the issue. The dichotomizing of “ts'daqah” and “charity,” commonly offered in place of such a definition, oversimplifies the complex connotations of both terms. The observation that “justice” is “obligatory” or “compulsory,” whereas “charity” is a voluntary act of love, also falls short. It is true that halakhah tends to be expressed in terms of obligations rather than rights, and that this tendency has played a major role in shaping rabbinic sources on support of the poor. As Moshe Silberg notes in the course of his analysis of the moral underpinnings of Jewish law, “[the halakbah] is not primarily concerned with the indebtedness to the claimant, but with the obligation to the debtor, with his religio-moral obligation … and it is only as though in a side effect, as a secondary result of the process, does the claimant receive his money.” Nevertheless, “obligatory giving” is by itself an incomplete characterization of the conceptual structure of ts'daqah.

Moreover, beyond these theoretical considerations, confusion concerning the meaning of ts'daqah also has practical implications. The term is frequently misapplied by Jews to describe any contribution to a not-for-profit organization (excluding taxes), regardless of how the contribution is actually used. Jewish communal fund-raisers regularly refer to contributions to sundry funds and projects as ts'daqah, whether the ultimate destination of a contribution is assistance to poor people, construction of a new swimming pool at a Jewish community center, or the salary of a fund administrator.

Religion and politics create volatile issues in many parts of the world and have been intensely debated in America. Recent charges and counter-charges about “godless humanists” and “religious zealots” have been heated. With an election campaign underway, the subject of religion in public life remains a potential iceberg issue of 1988 — massive but submerged. On the eve of the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights, it is plain that controversies about religion in public life are as lively and potent today as when the First Amendment was being debated nearly 200 years ago.

But how do the American people view the place of religion in public life today? Is there a vital knowledge of the Constitution? Where do Americans currently draw the line between church and state? Are there significant limits to tolerance? Are there important differences between the general public and key leadership groups? Is there less religious tolerance today than 20 or 30 years ago?

To answer such questions and help assess the state of the union regarding religion and public life, the Williamsburg Charter Foundation commissioned a nationwide opinion survey. The purpose of the study was to learn how people view these issues 200 years into the American experiment. The motive was not to find out simply what the majority wants changed or restricted. After all, the Bill of Rights was written to guarantee the rights of minorities against the will of the majority.

After delivering a Carlson Lecture at the University of Minnesota in 1994, Hannan Ashrawi was asked by an audience member if a newly formed, independent State of Palestine would adopt the Sharīa (Islamic law) as the law of the land. The question reveals a deep seated fear in the American mind about Islamic justice. Because Islamic concepts of law and justice have developed from a very different worldview, they seem incomprehensible to us. We don't understand why Muslims argue about theology when talking about legal cases that appear in the news.

The Islamic community is organized as a theocracy, where God is the ruler of the community. In such a community, there is very little doubt that God is the ultimate authority in all things, including questions of law. There might, however, be considerable doubt about how the human members of the community respond to, make use of, and/or interpret God's intentions. Islam is no exception to this rule. Throughout its history, groups of people have answered questions about God and the community in different ways.

This article surveys the evolution of the Catholic Church's official response to same-sex relations over the last two centuries. While the church has not altered its condemnation of same-sex relations, the justifications it offers for this negative judgment have shifted substantially, and they have moved, especially recently, in a direction that makes possible the acceptance of same-sex relations at some future—and perhaps not too-distant—date. This article explores the manualist tradition of the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries; twentieth-century developments in canon law; and the period of retrenchment and reaction under popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Its final section looks at developments under Pope Francis. It closes by considering the way the church's teaching shifted over the course of its history—penance and the forgiveness of sins; anti-Semitism; and the sin against natural-law of taking interest on a loan (usury). It proposes that we might witness the church undergo a similar shift on same-sex relations.

This essay examines the interplay between law, Christianity, and oppression in the thought of James Baldwin. This essay begins its inquiry from Baldwin’s own essay, Equal in Paris, and expands out to his broader writing. The essay makes four contributions. First, it shows that Equal in Paris presents a view of law and Christianity as simultaneously serving as instruments and sources of hypocrisy and injustice while representing critically important, if difficult to achieve, standards of justice and love. Second, the essay shows that for Baldwin avoidance and denial of collective moral failure underlies the hypocritical use of law and Christianity to perpetrate injustice rather than justice. Third, the essay reveals that Baldwin would see current legislative bans of critical race theory as a means of avoidance and denial of collective moral failure. Moreover, from a Baldwinian perspective, the maintenance of innocence through bans on critical race theory is a “crime” that typifies the problem at the root of racial oppression in America, which is the refusal to come to terms with the reality of white supremacy. Fourth, while agreeing with scholars who find significant overlap between Baldwin’s approach to law and critical race theory, the essay concludes that Baldwin’s work suggests that critical race theory’s neglect of love constitutes a critical shortcoming for critical race theory’s anti-subordinationist agenda.

James Luther Adams was famous for his pioneering work in religion and public life, religion and society. His interests embraced economics, public policy, contemporary culture, civil liberties, and church law. His wide-ranging mind at times compellingly focused on issues in civil law as well. I say “compellingly” advisedly, for Adams was essentially a Protestant theologian who had a central concern with the work and influence of Luther, so it was natural and inevitable that his interest would flow from theology of law to the wider subject of law and religion.

Adams' study of an issue was often characterized by certain intellectual qualities. He tried to include almost all aspects of the question; he was not satisfied, as courts at times are, with seeing only a single set of facts and answering a question that is limited only to the facts before him. He could see other sets of facts, and asked, what about them? This approach naturally forced him to look for an organizing principle, an all-embracing concept or set of concepts. First, then, he tried to be comprehensive in his examination; and secondly, he tried to be principled in his analysis and thinking.

In his essay, Professor Bassett traces the roots of the “myth of the nomad,” a myth which was used to justify the dispossession and destruction of Native Americans by colonial settlers. Bassett's primary focus is on a careful exposition of the sources and uses of the myth. The historical evidence he presents is persuasive and interesting, and his analysis is often thought-provoking.

I find myself, however, in some disagreement with Bassett over the function this type of work serves. While Bassett recognizes that “[w]e are all creators of myths,” he insists that we should “bring to light” the myths in the law and expose their “insidious uses[s].” As Bassett observes, the first-year property course offers numerous opportunities for the unmasking of such myths. Bassett seems to suggest that we view his fascinating essay as one such attempt to “demythologize the law.”

It is not possible, nor would it be desirable, to “demythologize” the law. The law is constructed upon, and often even constituted by, myths. The effort to eliminate those myths would produce legal concepts that were far less human, and probably no more humane. Our task, as both teachers and scholars, should be to recognize and evaluate the myths we use, but not necessarily to abandon them. Bassett's essay offers a fine beginning for this project of understanding.

There is a metaphorical reciprocity between theology and law. In brief, and in sum, let me begin in this way in grateful acknowledgment of Professor Ball's probing and provocative, fascinating, and instructive analysis, which sets out from the other pole of this reciprocity. At times, his search for an alternative to the dominant metaphor for law leaves the reader in some bewilderment and tempted to take cover in that salutary squib, offered from time to time by The New Yorker under the caption: “Block that metaphor!” As though anticipating that rude and facile exit from the search, Professor Ball is careful to provide an awesome and safer harbor in the paradigmatic law of the sea. This paradigm conceals both the alternative sought for and the unexpectedly promising expectation that—as things penultimate express and make room for things ultimate—the exciting prospect is that the lion and the calf do lie down together. “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water;… and there will be no more sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9; Revelation 7:17, 21:1). Even Woody Allen will be able to join the calf and the lion in the exchange of sleepless nights for waking and sleeping amidst the peace which passes all understanding (Philemon 4:7).

In his recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI grapples with one of the most vexing paradoxes concerning the current global economic crisis. There is no question that it is a global financial crisis. The collapse of the subprime mortgage loan market in the U.S. in 2007 prefigured similar collapses of real estate bubbles in other parts of the world. The collapse of these real estate bubbles exposed the degree of interconnectedness among financial institutions across the globe created by the worldwide market for the derivate investment products created on the backs of the underlying real estate loans—the mortgage-backed securities in all their complex manifestations, and the credit default swaps that were essentially insurance policies on the risks of default of these securities. Various configurations of international coordinating bodies have called for global responses to the crisis. At its root, however, the current crisis is in a very important sense fundamentally a uniquely local phenomenon. It is the result of individual consumer transactions that are about as inherently local as a commercial transaction can ever get—loans to specific individual consumers tied to specific unique, unmovable pieces of residential real estate. Every single loan packaged into the bundles of investment opportunities that became “toxic assets” held by large institutional investors originated with a contractual relationship between an individual borrower and a single lender. In addition to the global macroeconomic consequences of the collapse of this market, every one of these loans that goes into default has personal consequences for the individual borrower whose home is the collateral for that loan.

Growing numbers of people in the United States think it is important to teach about religion in the public schools. Teaching about religion includes consideration of the beliefs and practices of religions; the role of religion in history and contemporary society; and religious themes in music, art, and literature. But what is the appropriate place of religion in the public school curriculum? How does one approach such issues as textbook content, values education, creation science, and religious holidays?

The following questions and answers are designed to assist school boards as they make decisions about the curriculum, and educators as they teach about religion in ways that are constitutionally permissible, educationally sound, and sensitive to the beliefs of students and parents. There are other questions concerning religion and the schools not addressed here, including school prayer, equal access, and how schools accommodate diverse religious beliefs and practices. For a full discussion of these broader issues, please contact the sponsors of this statement.

Professor Derrick Bell's story, The Space Traders, posits that extraterrestrial beings arrive in the United States to propose a Trade: they will provide the means to enable the country to pay its debts, protect its environment, and ensure its energy supply, all in exchange for only one thing—to take all African Americans back to the aliens' home star. The story then recounts a frenzied sixteen days of politics, protests, and legal maneuvering, resulting in the forced deportation to an unknown fate of twenty million black men, women, and children: “Heads bowed, arms now linked by slender chains, black people left the New World as their forebears had arrived.”

This Article will consider several issues suggested by Bell's story. If one assumes that some readers would approve and others would disapprove of how the African Americans were treated, what might one say about the differing views? Are they simply different in the same way that one person might vacation in San Francisco while another person chooses New York City? Or is it possible to say that one view is wrong? And if one view is said to be wrong, is the meaning that the view actually is wrong or merely that it is wrong in the opinion of the person speaking? And even if every single person agrees as to whether or not the Trade should have been made, does this show that the consensus view is actually right? Are there any circumstances under which one could conclude that what was done was right or wrong in an absolute sense?

In Indonesia, law reform is one of the important mandates of the national reform agenda, including the restructuring of various legal and political institutions at all levels of government, the regulatory implementation of the 1945 Constitution at the village level, and the ideological renewal necessary to make these changes real in Indonesian society. The policy direction of the People's Consultative Council (MPR) has changed from domination by the central authority toward freedom, autonomy and local government empowerment. Laws that were once imposed from the top now reflect power-sharing with local governments. In particular, the government has granted special (and virtually unlimited) autonomy to the province of Nangroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD, also known as Aceh). This article will explore how that autonomy has been influenced by a more robust adoption of Shari'ah law in Aceh.

When the New Order rule fell on May 21, 1998, Indonesia moved from a centralized power to democratization, a process of legal development “from, by and for the people” through a decentralized system. The promulgation of Law 22 (1998) providing for local autonomy (which was amended in 2004 by Law 32) and Law 25 on the respective financial authority of the central and local governments is concrete evidence that decentralization is real in Indonesia.