Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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Although tolerance is an American ideal and freedom of religion is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, American history has often been characterized by inter-religious conflict. Without question, however, much progress has been made in overcoming blatant forms of institutionalized religious discrimination. But historic tensions among American religious groups, not to mention […]
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 […]
The Pew Forum analyzes the Supreme Court’s January 17 decision that the 1970 Controlled Substances Act (CSA) does not give the U.S. attorney general the authority to prohibit Oregon doctors from prescribing lethal doses of drugs to certain terminally ill patients who want to end their own lives.
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 […]