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  • report

    Oregon’s ’Death with Dignity’ Law: 10 Years Later

    Washington, D.C. Ten years have passed since Oregon became the first state in the nation to authorize doctors to assist terminally ill patients in voluntarily ending their lives. Although some predicted the legalization of physician-assisted suicide (also called physician aid in dying) in other states, similar measures have since been defeated in California, Hawaii and […]

  • short reads

    Converts to Islam

    That’s the percentage of Muslim Americans who say they converted to Islam, 77% say they have always been a Muslim

  • report

    The Media Sectors

    Did different media cover the campaign differently? Increasingly, PEJ’s New Index finds striking differences in how different media sectors approach the news. The campaign offers yet another case of this. But one feature was consistent across all sectors—the focus on the horse race, polling and strategy. Newspapers—More Enterprise and Emphasis on Governance On the front […]

  • report

    Looking for a Way Out: Rethinking the Arab-Israeli Conflict

    Few Palestinian families have deeper roots in Jerusalem than Sari Nusseibeh’s. In the 7th century, immediately after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, the caliph Omar the Great entrusted one of Nusseibeh’s ancestors with the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. From childhood onward, Nusseibeh, who was educated as a philosopher at Oxford and […]

  • report

    General Topics

    When the top stories of the quarter are put into the larger category of general topics, even broader patterns emerge. The war in Iraq becomes part of a larger grouping of coverage of U.S. foreign affairs. The campaign becomes part of a broader topic of politics. Anna Nicole becomes part of a grouping that includes […]

  • fact sheet

    Religious Displays and the Courts

    In a new series of occasional reports, “Religion and the Courts: The Pillars of Church-State Law,” the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life explores the complex, fluid relationship between government and religion. Among the issues to be examined are religion in public schools, displays of religious symbols on public property, conflicts concerning the free […]

  • fact sheet

    Looking Ahead

    Given the important role religion plays in the lives of many Americans, it is all but certain that communities will continue to put up religious displays in public places. As a result, courts will continue to wrestle with the same two seemingly conflicting principles that have arisen in past displays cases. On the one hand, […]

  • fact sheet

    Religious Holiday Displays

    The Lynch Decision A Christmas nativity scene in downtown Pawtucket, R.I., brought the issue of holiday displays to the Supreme Court for the first time. The case, Lynch v. Donnelly (1984), involved the city’s sponsorship of an annual display of holiday decorations, which included a crèche (a manger scene portraying the birth of Jesus) as well as a Santa […]

  • fact sheet

    Permanent Religious Displays

    A second category of Supreme Court decisions focuses on permanent, rather than seasonal, religious displays that involve some form of government sponsorship. Most of these cases involve displays of the Ten Commandments. The Stone Decision The court’s first such decision came in Stone v. Graham (1980), a case that focused on a Kentucky statute requiring […]

  • report

    How Muslims Compare With Other Religious Americans

    Although Muslims constitute a small minority in the United States, in many ways, they stand out not so much for their differences as for their similarities with other religious groups, especially evangelicals.