Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Court says practice is protected by the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act A unanimous Supreme Court ruled today that the adherents of a small religious group can continue, for now at least, to import and use an illegal drug in their worship services. The court, in a decision written by new Chief Justice John Roberts, […]
Parental Notification Case is to be Sent Back to an Appeals Court A unanimous Supreme Court today declined to rule on a New Hampshire abortion statute and instead instructed a federal appeals court to reconsider the statute’s constitutionality. Moreover, the justices determined that the lower court had erred in invalidating the entire law and instructed […]
The Federal Government’s Attempt to Use an Anti-Drug Law to Stop Physician-Assisted Suicide Fails By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court today upheld Oregon’s assisted-suicide law, rejecting an attempt by the Bush administration to use a federal anti-drug law to prohibit doctors from helping terminally ill patients to end their own lives. The decision is […]
District Court Contends that Dover, Pa., Challenge to Teaching Evolution is an Unconstitutional Endorsement of Religion A federal district court judge ruled today that a Pennsylvania school board’s decision to include intelligent design in the high school science curriculum was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, was the […]
Introduction December 9, 2005, marks the 100th anniversary of secularism in France, known as “laïcité.” In 1905 the French government passed a law stipulating “the separation of churches and the state,” thus enshrining secularism as a national principle. The law, which barred the state from officially recognizing, funding or endorsing religious groups, represented a major […]
December 7, 2005, marks the 40th anniversary of Dignitatis Humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious freedom. Dignitatis Humanae asserts the fundamental right of all individuals, religious communities and families to freedom of religious participation and expression, and it affirms the duty of civil authorities to protect this right. Beyond religious freedom, the document […]
Key West, Florida Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Florida, in December 2005 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle conference on religion, politics and public life. Conference speaker Leigh Eric Schmidt, a professor of religion at Princeton University and author of several books on the history of religion in American […]