Daily Archives: August 3, 2009

Citizen Link: “A Rasmussen poll shows only 41 percent support for her confirmation to the Supreme Court.”

Rasmussen Poll here

VolunteerTV.com: “Planned Parenthood already has a Knoxville location, off Kingston Pike. But the company is planning a new, expanded location on Homberg Drive in Bearden. Members of several churches and neighbor groups have come together to oppose the building.”

KTVA.com: “A local teacher has teamed up with Planned Parenthood to sue and stop the voter initiative that aims to make it illegal for underage girls to get an abortion without parental consent.”

FindLaw: “The law perhaps intersects most with polyamory in the realm of child custody and shared property. Though appearing to offer seemingly unlimited choice and openness, even polyamorous relationships can go south. It is at that time that polyamorists are likely to take a closer look at their legal rights to determine custody arrangements and how property will be divided.”

James Kirchick writing in the Washington Post: “Even if Obama does in fact believe in marriage equality, he hasn’t done — and is unlikely to do — much to forward the cause. And apart from some toothless sniping from a handful of gay activists and donors, he seems to be getting away with it. In this way, the presumed (yet secret) good intentions of Democrats can wind up doing more harm than good: They tell the gay community that Democrats are at least better than the GOP, thus providing an excuse that can be employed endlessly while they stall.”

Walking in Wisdom: “The Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz., nonprofit group that argues cases on behalf of Christian causes, promised free legal support under its “Pulpit Initiative” to churches, including Warroad Community Church, that agreed to challenge the federal ban on political speech during sermons about the moral qualifications of candidates seeking political office that were given on Sunday, September 28, of last year.”

http://www.theledger.com/article/20090802/NEWS/908035024/1410?Title=Assemblies-of-God-Meeting-May-Be-Historic

Christianity Today Her.meneutics Blog: “Many states, including Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Maryland, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Arizona, have laws in place that provide economic incentives for couples who attend a specified number of hours of marriage education.”

“The ABA policy-making House of Delegates passed by an overwhelming voice vote a resolution calling on Congress to repeal a section of the Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal marital benefits and protections to lawfully married same-sex couples.”

Boston Globe (Reuters): “Gunbattles raged for days last week as the security forces fought to put down the uprising by members of Boko Haram, a militant movement which wants sharia (Islamic law) to be imposed more widely in Africa’s most.”

CNA: “Religious extremists struck again in Pakistan on Saturday when a violent mob of Muslims looted and burned a Christian neighborhood, killing six Christians by burning them to death. The attacks took place in reaction to a rumor that the Koran was desecrated in a nearby village.”

ACLU: “The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Florida today filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the state’s decision to force a pregnant woman to remain hospitalized against her will.”

LifeNews: “AP writer Charles Babington wrote a ‘fact check’ story attempting to make the case that abortion is not included in the health care bills and that President Barack Obama doesn’t want it to be included . . . ”

Boston Globe (AP): “Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska says he’ll support Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor when the Senate votes on her confirmation this week.”

AP: “A central Wisconsin man accused of killing his 11-year-old daughter by praying instead of seeking medical care was found guilty Saturday of second-degree reckless homicide.”

AP: “The Arizona senator calls Sotomayor a judicial activist who tried to walk back from that record during her confirmation hearings.”

SSRN: “Most scholarship on statutory interpretation discusses what courts should do with ambiguous statutes. This paper investigates the crucial and analytically prior question of what ambiguity in law is. Does a claim that a text is ambiguous mean the judge is uncertain about its meaning? Or is it a claim that ordinary readers of English, as a group, would disagree about what the text means? This distinction is of considerable theoretical interest. It also turns out to be highly consequential as a practical matter.”

The National Law Journal (Law.com): “Double-digit tuition increases loom for students at some of the country’s top public law schools.”

The Daily Texam: “With a battle brewing over the Texas State Board of Education’s potential to emphasize the importance of the Bible and the Christian faith in American history classes, American Civil Liberties Union members are expressing deep concern.”

The Bulletin (Philadelphia): “‘Pro-life nurses shouldn’t be forced to assist in abortions against their beliefs,’ said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. ‘Requiring a devout, Catholic nurse to participate in a late-term abortion in order to remain employed is illegal, unethical, and violates her rights of conscience. Federal law requires that employers who receive funding from tax dollars must not compel employees to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, but this nurse’s objections fell on deaf ears.’”

Washington Times: “Not even two weeks have gone by since Episcopalians voted at their most recent gathering in Anaheim to allow dioceses to consecrate gay bishops than have two dioceses: Minnesota and Los Angeles, risen to the challenge. Three candidates for the episcopate are now out there, one of them a female cleric from Annapolis.”

AP: Episcopalians nominate gay clergy for bishop in LA

CNSNews: “Sen. John McCain says he is still on the fence when it comes to voting for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.”

Houston Chronicle (AP): “Gov. Rick Perry says the idea that laws shouldn’t be informed by religion is an extreme position.”

AllAfrica.com: “Several Members of Parliament have asked the government to be more flexible and allow incest, rape and defilement victims to procure abortions.”

CNN: “About 200 people have been arrested in a flare-up of anti-Christian violence in Gojra that left seven dead, a government minister said Monday.”

Monsters and Critics: “The Iraqi government on Monday said it had appointed a general to oversee efforts to prevent internet users from accessing pornographic websites.”

EWTN: “The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales as well as the Scottish Bishops’ Conference have submitted a joint response to an EU proposal for an Equal Treatment Directive. The bishops voiced ‘serious concerns’ that the proposal—which covers religion, belief, disability, age and sexual orientation—could be used by “pressure groups” to limit the freedom of Catholics.”

ABC News: “Just under one percent of all couples in the U.S. — or 594,391 people — identify themselves as gay, lesbian or transgender, and about 20 percent of them are raising children under the age of 18, according to the Williams Institute, an organization that advances sexual orientation law and public policy.”

Kevin R. C. Gutzman writing at Taki’s Magazine: “Since the days of Ronald Reagan and Edmund Meese, the Republican Party’s position has been that judges should be bound by the people’s understanding of a particular constitutional provision at the time they ratified it. This notion goes under the name ‘originalism.’ Recent events, including the Republican response to President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, reveal that the party is a highly unreliable vehicle for this principle.”

WPRI (AP): “Negotiations are under way to close a loophole that allows prostitution in Rhode Island so long as it’s done indoors.”

Part One at Proposition 8 and the Right to Marry: “Michael suggested I write on the issue of religious exemptions relating to gay marriages . . . But, what is the topic? Once unleashed, can these exemptions be restricted to the marriage arena? That’s the preliminary question I’m addressing today, in the first of these four consecutive, daily posts. As is my practice, I’ll try to discuss these legal and policy issues in a way that will interest lawyers, law students, academics, and everyone else with an interest in the subject.”

AP: “A federal appeals court reversed a lower court’s ruling on Friday that barred a Santeria priest from sacrificing goats in his Texas home, saying a city’s decision to prohibit the ritual violated the man’s religious rights.”

Merced v. City of Euless, Nos. 08-10358, 10506 (5th Cir. July 31, 2009)

“Among the high-profile items on the 555-member House’s calendar are resolutions that: Urge repeal of a portion of the federal Defense of Marriage Act . . . ”

ADF attorney Matt Bowman appeared on Real Presence Radio Live to discuss the case of a Catholic nurse force to participate in a late term abortion and increasing efforts nationwide to force such participation.

The MP3 runs just under 10 minutes.

Related ADF Media information page

How Appealing links to various reports and videos of Justice Souter’s remarks to the Bar Association.

Community Care: “Catholic Care has applied to the High Court to appeal a ruling by the Charity Tribunal that prevents it from discriminating against homosexuals – and could lead to it closing its adoption service.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In Freedom from Religion Foundation v. Creek, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65818 (D CO, July 22, 2009), a Colorado federal magistrate judge denied plaintiffs’ request that they be allowed to proceed using pseudonyms.”

CathNews.com: “Defying Vatican opposition, Italy has authorised the used of the abortion drug Mifepristone, also known as RU-486. The Church is threatening to excommunicate doctors who prescribe the pill and women who take it.”

Digital Journal: “Now, in a new report issued by Human Rights Watch, an international organization headquartered in New York City and in existence since 1978, Burundi faces fresh criticism for making the lives of the LGBT community even more difficult than they were before the law was passed.”

Dayton Daily News: “State Sen. Jon Husted wants to lift a moratorium on new charter schools to make Ohio more competitive for federal Race to the Top education grants, he said Friday, July 31.”

On Top Magazine: “The group Wisconsin Family Action (WFA) and the Christian-based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) are challenging the registry, arguing that is it prohibited by the state’s constitutional ban on gay marriage approved by voters in 2006. WFA supported the passage of the anti-gay marriage amendment as the Family Research Institute.”

Omaha World-Herald: “Citing tight budgets and high expenses, Planned Parenthood affiliates based in Omaha and Des Moines are likely to merge by the end of the summer.”

Winona Daily News: “Monday will be the first day same-sex couples in Wisconsin can register domestic partnerships, which will grant them 43 of the more than 200 rights afforded to married couples. . . . ‘The new domestic partnership scheme is precisely the type of marriage imitation that the constitutional amendment approved by Wisconsin voters was intended to prevent,’ said Brian Raum, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the plaintiffs.”

Arizona Republic: “On the other side of the fence, Bishop Painter has notified the court of his plan to appeal his conviction and the silencing of the bells. Now he has the backing of the Alliance Defense Fund, a national advocacy group for religious freedom. The group calls the Phoenix ordinance vague and subjective. It says there has never been a case like this before and the bells must be allowed to ring as an expression of religious beliefs.”

OneNewsNow: “‘We have a puppetry club, an Oprah club, a knitting club, Girl Scouts club. We even have a “tolerance club.” But, when the religious student club asked to meet, they said no because of the all-too-familiar so-called separation of church and state,’ [David Cortman] recalls.”

Pensacola News Journal: “‘Christian groups shouldn’t be banned from public parks for engaging in faith-based activities,’ said Alliance attorney Daniel Blomberg. ‘We commend the city for agreeing to scrap its profoundly unconstitutional access policy for the park and recognizing the church’s right to meet there and minister to the community through food and fellowship.’”

The Journal Record: “‘I think it demonstrates just how bad the initial opinion was,’ Theriot said of the evenly split vote. ‘The dissenting opinions really point that out, that this is really the first case since Van Orden v. Perry where a Ten Commandments monument displayed along with other historical monuments was struck down as unconstitutional.’”

One News Now: “While U.S. airports often have chapels, many of them no longer display crosses or other symbols that would make them specific to a particular faith.”

State Journal-Register: “The ACLU, which had fought the 14-year-old parental notification law from going into effect, now is working to make the process smooth for girls expected to seek what is known as ‘judicial bypass.’ The not-for-profit group has set up a toll-free phone number . . . and the Web site . . . to help girls find lawyers throughout the state who are willing to provide free legal representation on short notice.”

The Capital Times: “With some 1,400 to 2,400 same-sex couples living in Dane County, turnout Monday was expected to be robust as couples have their first opportunity to take advantage of the historic piece of legislation signed by Gov. Jim Doyle June 29.”

“It would be disastrous for the justices to do so. They would repeat the error in Roe v. Wade: namely, trying to remove a morally charged policy issue from the forums of democratic deliberation and resolve it according to their personal lights.”

SSRN: “This Article analyzes the rights claims and theoretical frameworks deployed by Christian Right and gay rights cause lawyers in the context of gay-inclusive school programming to show how two movements with conflicting normative positions are using similar representational and rhetorical strategies.”

SSRN: “The strategy for coping with value pluralism that Rawls has proposed is to permit political decisions, at least with respect to basic rights, to depend only on those goods that can be inferred from the bare requirements of respectful relations between persons. His account offers such a parsimonious conception of the good that it cannot cognize some atrocities.”

SSRN: “This article discusses local regulatory techniques utilized by cities for controlling the location and operation of places of worship in the United States. The article also examines national constitutional and statutory protections afforded local places of worship from discriminatory and unreasonable local controls, including recent court decisions applying the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.”

SSRN: “Kent Greenawalt claims that one rationale for nonestablishment of religion is personal autonomy. If, however, the law is barred from manipulating people in religious directions (and thus violating their autonomy), while it remains free to manipulate them in nonreligious directions (and thus violate their autonomy in exactly the same way), autonomy as such is not what is being protected. The most promising alternative is to understand religion as a distinctive human good that is being protected from government interference.”

SSRN: “Seemingly, the Supreme Court vindicated the civil libertarian position that creating a public school district in the religiously homogeneous village of Kiryas Joel, established and populated exclusively by members of the Satmar sect of ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews, constituted a violation of the principle of separation between church and state embodied in the establishment clause. In fact, the Court’s decision did no such thing.”

SSRN: “This paper addresses a major question in the field of judicial politics, namely what determines whether justices join coalitions on the U.S. Supreme Court.”

SSRN: “This article explains the importance of the interdependence between domestic politics and foreign politics in determining compliance. International legal commitments allow the formation of coalitions between those who will benefit by their own state’s compliance with the international legal rule in question, and those who will benefit from other states’ compliance with the international legal rule. This theory is based on established approaches to international relations in the political science literature, in particular two-level game theory associated with Robert Putnam and the ‘second image reversed’ approach associated with Peter Gourevitch.”

SRRN: “In this Review, I critically examine the three parts of Leiter’s book, which address: (1) the philosophical legacy of American legal realism, with specific reference to the nature of justification in adjudication; (2) the appropriate philosophical methodology to determine the nature of law (including what conclusions to draw from this methodology); and (3) the bearing that issues in meta-ethics might have on legal objectivity. Special emphasis is given throughout to the larger prospects for a naturalized jurisprudence, and to how alternative versions of naturalized views might look.”