Daily Archives: July 23, 2010

Market Watch: “A top Chinese central bank official suggested switching away from the U.S. dollar as a benchmark for the yuan’s foreign-exchange rate, switching instead to a basket of currencies, according to remarks published Thursday.”

WJBF-TV: “An Augusta State University student says her religious beliefs about homosexuality are being questioned as she tries to get a degree in counseling. A legal group is defending her and filed a complaint on the student’s behalf. … Students at ASU had mixed reactions. Some students say it’ll be hard for the student to be a counselor with such strong views. While other students criticize the university for trying to get Keeton to change her views but others say if she’s going to counsel young students, she needs to keep an open mind.” | Video at link

The Oklahoman (AP): “Freezer maker Electrolux says it will accommodate Muslim employees during Ramadan, the upcoming monthlong religious holiday.”

The Herald: “The Catholic Church will never celebrate same-sex unions – ‘not now, not in the future, not ever’ – even if the law changes to allow religious celebrants to conduct gay marriages, the Bishop of Paisley, Philip Tartaglia, has told the Prime Minister. The bishop has written to David Cameron, quoting comments the Prime Minister made during a Gay Pride reception at 10 Downing Street in June.”

MSNBC (AP): “The family of a southeast Texas firefighter killed in a July 4 blaze has sued to void his marriage to his transgender widow and prevent her from getting his death benefits because she was born a man and Texas doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages.”

ADF Attorney Erik Stanley writing at Speak Up Movement / Church: “A new Gallup poll shows how much confidence Americans have in their institutions. The big news from the poll is the very low confidence rating Americans have in Congress – only a shocking 11% of those polled have great confidence in Congress as an institution. But among the major institutions in American life, Americans ranked their confidence in the ‘church or organized religion’ as fourth behind only the military, small business, and the police. … Archbishop Caput and DeTocqueville are right. The church must be free for freedom to flourish, but the church also has responsibilities to shape the virtue of the citizens for freedom to continue to flourish. The Gallup poll is good news for the church in America, but it should also serve as a sobering reminder of the Church’s responsiblity in American life.”

Atlanta Journal Constitution: “Keeton is represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of Christian attorneys. The suit accuses Augusta State officials of violating Keeton’s First Amendment rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion. ‘A public university student shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being a Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here,’ [David French], senior counsel for the defense fund, said in a news release.”

ADF Attorney David Hacker writing at Speak Up Movement / University: “So while the District promised freedom, it still wanted the right to censor and punish faculty for speech it disliked. This is a dangerous position that all faculty should be concerned about, lest they fall into the same trap as Professor Sheldon. The court rejected the District’s Garcetti arguments, refused to dismiss the case, and held that ‘a teacher’s instructional speech is protected by the First Amendment.’ This is one of a handful of rulings nationwide that addresses Garcetti in the classroom and will provide protection to many faculty in the future. Professor Sheldon stood courageously to protect her First Amendment rights in the college classroom. The settlement pays her $100,000 and exonerates her teaching record. But the District’s unwillingness to embrace its proclamations of academic freedom is yet another example of the underlying hostility to free speech in the Academy.” | ADF News Release

Associated Press: “Lawyers for a Republican gay rights organization asked a federal judge Friday to issue an injunction halting the military’s ban on openly gay service members. Government lawyers countered by warning U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips not to overstep her bounds while ruling on the lawsuit by the Log Cabin Republicans.” | Case name: Log Cabin Republicans v. U.S.A., No. CV 04-08425-VAP (C.D. Cal.)

Michelle Boorstein writing at The Washington Post / On Faith: “I’ve been requesting access to even a few of these offices for more than six months, but am getting nowhere with the White House. And the people who run the offices aren’t allowed to say three words to a reporter.”

Courier-Post: “In a lawsuit filed on July 16, the Apostolic Church of Deliverance accuses the borough of violating the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000. … The complaint asserts that the borough permits only those uses outlined under the municipal zoning code. Churches are not among the permitted uses under the code, which means religious institutions must seek a variance in order to operate in Pemberton, it says.” | Complaint in Apostolic Church of Deliverance v. Borough of Pemberton (D.N.J.)

KansasCity.com (AP): “The law was approved by the 2010 Legislature and paves the way for victims of child porn to sue those who exploited them. Victims can seek damages of at least $150,000 from those involved in producing, promoting and possessing the pornography.”

CNN: “Several dozen current, former and contracted employees of the U.S. Defense Department may have put national security at risk by accessing and purchasing child pornography, government documents showed Friday.”

The Moscow Times: “A new round of U.S.-Russian negotiations on child adoptions that started Wednesday in Moscow swiftly decided that same-sex U.S. couples would be banned from adopting Russian children. Only heterosexual married couples will be permitted to adopt children, as Russia does not recognize same-sex marriages, said Alina Levitskaya, a senior official at the Education and Science Ministry, Interfax reported.”

Dallas Morning News: “A sharply divided State Board of Education opened the door today to tapping the state’s education trust fund for charter school facilities, despite warnings that the action could harm the fund. Pushed by the board’s social conservative bloc, the decision could allow up to $100 million of the Permanent School Fund to be used to construct or purchase buildings that would be leased to some of the state’s 460 independent charter schools.”

Las Vegas Sun: “Citing a lack of support for the U.S. military and ‘demonstrated hostility’ toward gun rights, Sen. John Ensign said Friday he will vote against the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Associated Press: “Republican Senator Susan Collins says she’ll vote to confirm Elena Kagan as a Supreme Court justice.”

The Christian Institute: “Christians have had enough of being treated as second class citizens, a Conservative MP has warned during a Parliamentary debate. The stark warning from Steve Baker, MP for Wycombe, is likely to be welcomed by many Christians who feel that their faith is often marginalised in the public sphere.”

The Christian Institute: “Parents are ‘rarely’ consulted about their children’s lessons involving sex education, a new Ofsted report has said. The study, by the Government’s schools inspectorate, found that some schools were failing to help children to ‘say no’ to sex, in their Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education lessons.”

The Christian Institute: “New plans to criminalise prostitution in Scotland will be launched in the autumn, following a consultation with relevant groups. Trish Godman, Labour MSP for West Renfrewshire, has asked clerks to draw up a list of agencies that should be consulted ahead of a bill being drafted.”

Marci A. Hamilton writing at FindLaw: “[T]his is a doctrine that pits anti-discrimination laws (that is, Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and their state counterparts) against religious-liberty claims. There is now a significant split among the courts regarding several aspects of the doctrine, and, therefore, it is time for the Court to weigh in. With federal appellate courts settling into their particular interpretations, we are seeing that the same claims can get significantly different treatment depending on the circuit.”

NJ.com: “Gov. Chris Christie vetoed legislation today that would have restored $7.5 million in grants for 58 clinics providing birth control and basic health care to uninsured people, a decision some Democrats lawmakers say they intend to overturn.”

AFP: “Heavy use of ‘morning-after’ pills is causing concern in India where the government has banned ads criticised for promoting them as a primary contraceptive rather than an emergency measure.”

LifeSiteNews: “The non-partisan fact-checking site FactCheck.org has vindicated the National Right to Life Committee’s (NRLC) claim that federal monies were on the brink of funding abortions in state high-risk insurance pools before the matter was exposed by NRLC, prompting the Obama administration to retroactively enforce Hyde-amendment restrictions.”

LifeSiteNews: “ABC Family, which was founded in 1977 as an extension of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network, has earned a ‘good’ rating from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) for its ‘LGBT-inclusive’ programming, which took up 37% of its original prime time programming over the 2009-2010 season. The only network with a higher percentage of . . . was MTV, which also became the first TV network to win an ‘excellent’ rating from GLAAD for its portrayal of homosexuals . . .”

Operation Rescue: “A representative of the Pennsylvania Health Department contacted Operation Rescue today with additional information on the status of the ordered closure of four Pennsylvania abortion clinics operated by disgraced abortionist Steven Chase Brigham. Brigham has transferred ownership of his clinics in Allentown and Pittsburgh to Rose Health Services. … However, Brigham’s clinics in Erie and State College have been ordered to immediately stop doing abortions. The clinics are allowed to remain open for services other than abortion.” | Via LifeSiteNews

LifeSiteNews: “Following the sound defeat of a bill to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada’s Parliament this spring, dozens of the country’s MPs – representing all parties – have come together to address the root causes that lead some of Canada’s vulnerable to desire their own deaths. ‘It’s not enough simply to oppose assisted suicide and euthanasia,’ said Harold Albrecht (Kitchener-Conestoga), the Conservative co-chair of a new Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care (PCPCC).”

North Devon Gazette (July 15): “Bideford Town Council has agreed to accept an offer from a Manchester-based law firm to act on its behalf free of charge if a battle over the saying of prayers at meetings goes to court. The firm of Aughton Ainsworth made the offer after the National Secular Society announced its intention to seek a Judicial Review to end the saying of prayers as part of the Bideford council meetings.” More information on the case here.

The Hill: “A group of 21 liberal House Democrats on Friday warned the Obama administration that new limits on abortion coverage in high-risk pools will put vulnerable women in jeopardy of losing needed care. … Earlier this month, the White House made waves by announcing that high-risk insurance pools — designed to cover sick Americans who have been denied private insurance — can’t cover elective abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is threatened by the pregnancy.”

LifeNews: “Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said in a radio interview today that he may not fully defend a new state law that helps women obtain more information about abortion risks. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed a lawsuit against a bill supported by pro-life advocates.”

Rome News-Tribune (AP): “The responses from former Secretary of State Karen Handel and former Congressman Nathan Deal before a group of Republican women offered a preview of the campaign ahead of an Aug. 10 runoff. Unofficial results show Handel winning 34 percent of the GOP vote on Tuesday, while Deal garnered nearly 23 percent. The winner will face Democrat Roy Barnes. … Deal described himself as a consistent opponent of abortion and has said he believes abortion should only be allowed to protect the health of a mother. … Handel also describes herself as pro-life but said abortion should be permitted for victims of incest or rape.”

BBC (July 12): “The UK’s Royal Society is launching a major study into human population growth and how it may affect social and economic development in coming decades. The world’s population has risen from two billion in 1930 to 6.8 billion now, with nine billion projected by 2050. The society acknowledges it is delving into a hugely controversial area, but says a comprehensive and scientific review of the evidence is needed.”

National Secular Society: “An Irish Senator has called for the country to adopt a secular constitution. Labour Party Senator Ivana Bacik told the AGM of Atheist Ireland last weekend that there was now an appetite for constitutional reform in Ireland now that it is no longer dominated by Catholicism.”

Reuters: “Top European Union officials held talks this week with religious leaders, part of a policy of holding consultations with religious groups that was enshrined in the EU’s Lisbon reform treaty, which came into force last December. But not everyone supports the move. … It was the the sixth such consultation since 2005, but the first to take place in the context of the Lisbon treaty, the EU’s latest collective agreement. Article 17 of the treaty commits the EU to maintaining ‘an open, transparent and regular dialogue with … churches and (non-confessional and philosophical) organisations’.”

The Sydney Morning Herald: “A surge in anti-Christian violence in the satellite cities that ring Jakarta, almost always unpunished, has exposed alarming new fissures in Indonesian society. It has also raised concerns about the commitment of the police and the government to the country’s founding principle of religious freedom.”

New York Times: “Late Thursday night, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement that Natan Sharansky, the head of the Jewish Agency, would lead a committee of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements and that no conversion law would be submitted before January. Litigation in the Israeli Supreme Court on the same topic led by the Reform and Conservative movements would be suspended for the same period.”

DNA India: “Bangladesh is unlikely to ban religious parties or drop the Islamic verse ‘Bismillahir Rahmani Rahim’ from the preamble of the constitution that will be reviewed by a top parliamentary panel in a bid to restore the ‘secular’ spirit of 1971 ‘Liberation War.’”

FOX News: “School officials in Cranston, R.I., say they can’t afford a court battle with the American Civil Liberties Union, so they will remove a banner that has been displayed in a high school auditorium for more than half a century — a mural that calls on ‘Our Heavenly Father’ to help students conduct themselves appropriately.”

CBN News: “Now plans are being considered to introduce religious aspects to the ceremonies, causing concern among evangelical Christians in the United Kingdom. … But Don Horrocks, head of public affairs for the Evangelical Alliance, says no church should be obliged to perform the ceremonies. ‘We would insist that no church would ever be required by law or be pressured to do anything they didn’t want to do,’ he said.”

The Christian Post: “The leader of the World Council of Churches is urging Pakistan’s president and prime minister to initiate measures toward the repeal of their controversial blasphemy laws, which critics say are often abused by extremists.”

Catholic News Agency: “Next month, former Judge Fernando Ferrin Calamita will be forced to pay the Spanish government $127,000 for denying a lesbian couple’s request to adopt a girl. … In Ferrin’s ruling he ordered a report be obtained from experts on the consequences the adoption would have on the girl’s development. In December of 2009, the Supreme Court suspended him, fined him $919 and ordered him to pay the couple $7,661.”

Jonah Goldberg writing at National Review Online: “Many conservatives think JournoList is the smoking gun that proves not just liberal media bias (already well-established) but something far more elusive as well: the Sasquatch known as the Liberal Media Conspiracy. I’m not so sure. In the 1930s, the New York Times deliberately whitewashed Stalin’s murders. In 1964, CBS reported that Barry Goldwater was tied up with German Nazis. In 1985, the Los Angeles Times polled 2,700 journalists at 621 newspapers and found that journalists identified themselves as liberal by a factor of 3 to 1. Their actual views on issues were far more liberal than even that would suggest. … In other words, JournoList is a symptom, not the disease. And the disease is not a secret conspiracy but something more like the ‘open conspiracy’ H. G. Wells fantasized about, where the smartest, best people at every institution make their progressive vision for the world their top priority.”

Ryan Mauro writing at Pajamas Media: “You probably didn’t hear about it, but Muslim youths rioted in Grenoble, France, on July 16, sparking some of the worst instability the country has faced since the 2005 riots. Now, like then, most of the media declined to mention the religious or ethnic background of the rioters, instead painting them as unruly youngsters and covering the eyes of the public to the slow dissolution of France as we know it.” | For more information about Islam in France, see this ADF Alliance Alert compound tag: http://www.alliancealert.org/tag/topic-islam+country-france/

Washington Examiner: “The Berwick affair has made an already polarized Senate more divided. Recently North Carolina Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan tried to advance two judicial nominations for debate on the floor, a move that required Republican consent. She didn’t get it. ‘Democrats didn’t schedule so much as a committee hearing for Donald Berwick,’ Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reminded Hagan. ‘I am not inclined at this point to consent to the agreement proposed by my friend from North Carolina.’”

Naftali Bendavid, writing in the Wall Street Journal (full text via Google News): “Supreme Court confirmations are now part of the partisan battleground, with groups on both sides aggressively pressuring senators. … With Ms. Kagan, Democrats say, Republicans are under pressure from the surge of conservative activism leading up to the midterm elections, and have adopted a strategy of opposing whatever Mr. Obama does. Republicans deny that. They blame Democrats for the current atmosphere, saying that after the Democratic assaults on Messrs. Bork, Thomas, Roberts and Alito, they are unwilling to disarm unilaterally.”

PR Newswire: “Today Family Research Council and The Liberty Institute announced the filing of a motion for argument in a recent National Day of Prayer (NDP) case citing the Obama Administration’s weak defense of the NDP as the cause. Last April, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb declared the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. The district court’s decision is now being reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.”

Peninsula Daily News: “Davis, a candidate with Pam Lindquist in the Aug. 17 primary, said incumbent Judge Rick Porter had required a potential juror in a DUI trial to pledging to truthfully answer questions about her qualifications to be a juror, ‘so help you God.’ The judge uses the term, asking if the juror so swears, and the juror is expected to answer, ‘I do.’ When the woman objected — after she was impaneled — to saying ‘I do’ to the phrase ‘so help you God,’ Porter told her to sit in the jury box ‘all by herself,’ Davis told the audience, saying Porter’s actions were unnecessary and suggesting that Porter humiliated the woman.” | Via Religion Clause.

ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence appeared on the Georgene Rice Show to discuss: Augusta State Univ. to counseling student: change your beliefs or get out | MP3 11:13 mins.

ADF Attorney David French appeared on WAFL with John Bryant and Cleve Walker to discuss this: Augusta State Univ. to counseling student: change your beliefs or get out | MP3 12:29 mins.

ADF attorney Doug Napier appeared on the Janet Mefferd Show to discuss the situation involving Arizona students prohibited from praying outside SCOTUS. | MP3 18:21 mins

CitizenLink: “What was her crime? ‘Jen has voiced disagreement in several class discussions and in written assignments with the gay and lesbian “lifestyle.” She stated in one paper that she believes GLBTQ “lifestyles” to be identity confusion,’ according to the university’s ‘Remediation Plan’ for Jennifer, which is documented in an Alliance Defense Fund legal complaint.”

Religion Clause: “A graduate student in the counseling program at Augusta State University in Georgia filed a civil rights lawsuit Wednesday alleging that her free speech, free exercise, equal protection and due process rights were infringed by conditions imposed on her in order for her to remain in the University’s program. … Alliance Defense Fund issued a press release announcing the filing of the case.”

Edge Boston: “[S]even same-sex families, together with the Montana branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have brought suit against the state, seeking the establishment of state-recognized domestic partnerships. … Last year, Montana’s supreme court upheld the parental rights of Michelle Kulstad, the former long-term life partner of Barbara Maniaci, the biological mother of the children that the two women were rearing until their relationship ended. … The court’s lone dissenter, Justice Jim Rice, echoed the arguments made by the Alliance Defense Fund’s attorney, writing in a dissent that, ‘Now, even parents who are fit and capable . . . are potentially subject to the claims of third parties for rights to their children.’”

“‘Religious liberties are under attack across the country,’ Kellum says. ‘My sense is that there’s some type of knee-jerk reaction, almost an allergic reaction, if someone sees the expression of religion,’ he says.”

The Christian Institute: “A Christian student in the US has been told she will not be permitted to graduate unless she changes her beliefs. … ‘Jennifer Keeton has not been accused of mistreating a client,’ pointed out ADF Senior Counsel [David French].”

Pacific Justice Institute Press Release via Standard Newswire: “A former professor at San Jose City College has received a favorable settlement of a federal lawsuit against the school. The former professor, June Sheldon, was represented by attorneys for Pacific Justice Institute as co-counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom.” | ADFmedia.org Sheldon v. Dhillon resource page

San Francisco Chronicle: “A San Jose community college district has agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a free-speech lawsuit by a professor who was fired after allegedly telling students that male homosexuality is caused by stress during pregnancy and that true lesbians don’t exist. … ‘Professors shouldn’t be fired simply for doing their jobs,’ said attorney [David Hacker] of the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian conservative organization that represented Sheldon.” | ADF News Release

WorldNetDaily: “School officials Mary Jane Anderson-Wiley, Paulette Schenck and Richard Deaner demanded student Jen Keeton, 24, go through a ‘remediation’ program after she asserted homosexuality is a behavioral choice, not a ‘state of being’ as a professor said, according to the complaint. … ADF Senior Counsel [David French] contended a public university student ‘shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being a Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here.’” | ADF News Release

“The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent letters to the cities of Aiken and Woodruff, S.C., and Spartanburg County, S.C., demanding that they discontinue the prayers, which they falsely claim are unconstitutional. The group Atheists of Florida has gone so far as to file a lawsuit to stop the practice in the city of Lakewood, Fla.”

Mercury News: “A San Jose City College professor fired for classroom comments about the origins of homosexuality will get $100,000 from the school in a legal settlement announced Thursday. … ‘Professors shouldn’t be fired simply for doing their jobs as educators,’ ADF litigation staff counsel [David J. Hacker] said Thursday. ‘Professionally addressing both sides of an academic issue according to the class curriculum is not grounds for dismissal; it’s what a professor is supposed to do.’” | ADFmedia.org Sheldon v. Dhillon resource page

The Christian Post: “An Augusta State University student filed suit Wednesday after she was told to change her Christian beliefs or otherwise be expelled from the school’s graduate counseling program. ‘A public university student shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being a Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here,’ said David French, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund. ‘Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform.’”

LifeSiteNews: “‘While he continues to hold his appointment as adjunct professor, that title is virtually meaningless if he has no classes to teach,’ wrote ADF attorney David Hacker in a letter to UIUC. The attorney also expressed suspicion that the promised ‘review’ of Howell’s censure could be skewed by prejudice among UIUC administration: according to correspondence published by the Champaign News-Gazette, Ann Mester, associate dean for UIUC’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, told the head of UIUC’s Religion Department that she believed Howell’s emails ‘violate university standards of inclusivity, which would then entitle us to have him discontinue his teaching arrangement with us.’”

Religion and the Secular State
Catherine M.A. McCauliff, 58 Am. J. Comp. L. 31 (2010)

“Today we are in a secular age. Thus in 1990, Justice Scalia effectively de-constitutionalized claims under the free exercise clause of the first amendment in Smith. Recently, in his concurrence in Pleasant Grove, Justice Scalia urges the same treatment for claims under the establishment clause. De facto de-constitutionalization of both clauses perhaps can be read to suggest that religion is less relevant to American society today. At first members of minority religions lose their protected status under the first amendment. As proportionally fewer people are aligned with mainstream religions, more and more people will stand alone and unprotected by the first amendment.”

Assisted Reproductive Technology and the Externality of Multiple Births
Richard J. Hawkins, 2009 Mich. St. L. Rev. 719

“Assisted reproductive technology (ART) has enabled millions of infertile individuals and couples to conceive. Current ART practices and procedures, however, often result in multi-fetal pregnancies and, consequently, multiple births, defined as twin, triplet, or higher-order births. Multiple births pose significantly greater health risks to infants and mothers than singleton births do, resulting in substantially higher medical and social costs. The high cost of this reproductive choice, however, is not fully borne by either the ART providers or consumers. Rather, a significant portion of the cost is often borne by society at large. In determining how to address the multiple-birth problem, this Article examines previously proposed solutions in the form of liability rules and inalienability rules and concludes that these proposals have significant shortcomings that would impede their applicability, cloud their constitutionality, and inhibit their political viability. This Article posits that, by viewing the proliferation of ART and the resultant influx of multiple births as a classic negative externality, a property rule can be devised so as to combine the best elements of the previous proposals while minimizing their practical, constitutional, and political pitfalls. Specifically, this Article explores the implementation of a tradable permit program for multiple births similar in format to “cap-and-trade” programs used to control pollutants. If multiple-birth permits distributed by the federal government were bought and sold by interested parties on a centralized exchange, ART providers and consumers would necessarily internalize the cost of their reproductive choices, and the high incidence of multiple births would subsequently decrease to a more manageable level.”

“Microscopic Americans?” A New Conception of the Right to Recover for the Loss of a Pre-Embryo in Tort Law
Lauren Russo, 2009 Mich. St. L. Rev. 789

“This Comment examines that particular gap in the law: remedies available to individuals who suffer the negligent destruction of pre-embryos created through in vitro fertilization. The theory of recovery for the destruction of a pre-embryo should be a conversion approach because the pre-embryo occupies an interim category between property and personhood; thus, the pre-embryo should not be classified as a person for the purposes of state wrongful death statutes. This Comment begins in Part I by surveying the legal status of the human embryo. Part II examines the tort law surrounding wrongful death for the unborn, and Part III discusses the tort law surrounding wrongful death for the pre-embryo. Part IV explores alternatives to the wrongful death suit for pre-embryos. This Comment concludes by proposing a conversion suit as an alternative remedy for progenitors who suffer the destruction of their pre-embryos.”

Todd E. Pettys, Sodom’s Shadow: The Uncertain Line Between Public and Private Morality. 61 Hastings L.J. 1161 (2010). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1528446

“In citizens’ debates about issues of public policy, we frequently encounter what this Article calls the divine accountability thesis – the controversial claim that the divine realm will punish a city, state, or nation unless it performs or proscribes certain forms of conduct. Many of us reject that claim, but its persistent usage in numerous societies over the past five thousand years teaches us a great deal about citizens’ political self-conceptions. This Article begins by arguing that the divine accountability thesis illustrates human beings’ deeply ingrained tendency to regard their political communities as discrete moral entities, individually deserving of punishment or reward. Drawing from the work of Ronald Dworkin and others, the Article then argues that the divine accountability thesis has an influential secular counterpart, consisting of two widely shared perceptions that, taken together, compose what this Article calls the integration thesis. The integration thesis holds that our individual identities are integrated with, and partially constructed by, the political communities to which we belong, and that each of our political communities is akin to a personified moral agent whose conduct reverberates in the individual lives of its integrated members. The integration thesis and the divine accountability thesis often push in precisely the same direction – namely, toward using the law as a means of stripping individuals of their freedom to make certain moral decisions for themselves. Hoping to draw advocates of these and other political viewpoints onto common ground, the Article proposes seven questions that all scholars and citizens ought to ask when assessing whether a given moral issue should be resolved collectively by a political community or should be left for each individual to resolve on his or her own.”

Adult Domestic Trafficking and the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act
Lindsay Strauss, 19 Cornell J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 495 (2010)

“Adult domestic trafficking is a serious national issue that requires attention from the federal government in order to stop the traffickers, pimps, and johns who exploit countless women each year. The federal government refuses to recognize that the domestic trafficking of American citizens is a national issue, even though state laws have proven to be ineffective and have failed to curtail this industry’s growth. Adult domestic trafficking victims are still not recognized by the legal system or by some feminist scholars as victims. These women, accordingly, do not receive the services and help they need to leave this system of abuse, and their pimps go unpunished and are free to abuse again. The most recent reauthorization of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPA)–the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA of 2008)–represents a step in the right direction to address human trafficking. It increases the services available to child domestic trafficking victims and international victims, and it lowers the legal barriers these victims face when they seek justice against their traffickers. The TVPRA of 2008, however, is only a first step toward addressing the issue of human trafficking because adult domestic victims are largely left out of its reforms. To successfully combat the issue of human trafficking in the next reauthorization of the TVPA, the federal government must address the inherent problems faced by adult domestic victims. Without a uniform and serious federal approach to the issue of human trafficking, which includes adult domestic trafficking, human trafficking will only continue to grow and adversely affect thousands of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents.”

Yellow Snow on Sacred Sites: A Failed Application of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act
Joshua A. Edwards, 34 Am. Indian L. Rev. 151 (2010)

“The holy lands that are dear to these tribes are owned by the federal government, which has approved a proposal to expand a ski resort known as the Snowbowl. The proposal is focused on pumping 1.5 million gallons of sewage effluent per day from the nearby city of Flagstaff, Arizona to the Peaks in order to manufacture artificial snow for the Snowbowl. The purpose of the plan is to improve the economic viability of the ski resort, which has suffered diminished profits from decreased annual snowfall. Attempting to halt the plan, the tribes initiated suit against the U.S. Forest Service on a variety of claims. This note will focus on their claim under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA). … The Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of RFRA in Navajo Nation is too narrow to fulfill Congress’s intent of expanding First Amendment protection. The court interpreted ‘substantial burden’ to fit only the facts of previous Supreme Court cases in lieu of independently determining whether the use of sewage effluent on the Snowbowl places a substantial burden on the tribes’ exercise of religion. This has the effect of completely undermining the congressional intent of RFRA, which was to expand the protection proffered to religious expression.”