by I have to admit I just don’t “get” the argument that the mandatory insurance provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are unconstitutional because the Commerce Clauses only empowers Congress to regulate “activity,” not “inactivity.” (For yesterday’s federal district opinion endorsing that argument, see here. For more detailed critiques, see, for example, the [...]
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The annual battle over Christmas and the separation of Church and State is on. In Philadelphia, the city’s Managing Director ordered the word “Christmas” removed from sign at the entrance to the “German Christmas Village” at City Hall. The Mayor then countermanded him, and directed that “Christmas” be put back. See here. (For one response, [...]
Read the full postSome readers of this blog might be interested in two pieces I’ve posted recently on SSRN. The first is an upcoming book chapter on “The Natural Law Challenge to Choice of Law.” In addition to a discussion of the relation of natural law (if it exists) to positive law and sovereign political deliberation, it also [...]
Read the full postA couple of months ago, I read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” a post-apocalyptic story that manages to celebrate the possibility of goodness and the hope of redemption even in the midst of unremitting destruction and human depravity. The religious subtext in the novel is implicit but clear. One particular passage jumped out at me, though, [...]
Read the full postI was recently invited to join the ReligiousLeftLaw blog, and with their kind permission, I’m going to be cross-posting some of my thoughts both here and there. Here’s the substance of my first effort: Let’s define the religious left, very roughly and tentatively, as tending toward some sort of religious universalism, comfort with freedom of [...]
Read the full postIn 1657, Peter Stuyvesant, the Governor of New Netherland (now New York), who had no patience for religious diversity, got wind of the presence of Quakers in the settlement at Flushing. He ordered the town officials in Flushing to hand over the Quakers for arrest. The officials refused. They wrote Stuyvesant a letter, the Flushing [...]
Read the full postFurther thoughts on the alleged parallel between opposition to the planned Islamic center (Park51) near Ground Zero and opposition about ten years ago to the building of a convent and the erection of crosses next to the Auschwitz death camps: I wrote in my first post that the relevant question in neither case should be [...]
Read the full postWhen opposition began to get stirred up to the planned Islamic cultural center near (not at!) Ground Zero, I thought the objections were intolerant, and even silly. Then I was stopped short by the comparison, made by the ADL and others, between opposition to the center and Jewish opposition about ten years ago — opposition [...]
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