Law and Religion Digest

Journal of Law and Religion:

Read the latest issue of the Journal of Law and Religion here. JLR is proud to be expanding our open access publishing. Be sure to check out the growing list of titles in our open access archive and FirstView content below:

• Jewish Ethics Regarding Refugees: Ideology and Realization by Tsuriel Rashi
• The Profane/Sacred Economy of Law and Religion. A review essay on Sovereignty and the Sacred: Secularism and the Political Economy of Religion. By Robert A. Yelle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. 304. $100.00 (cloth); $32.50 (paper); $32.50 (digital). ISBN: 9780226585598. by John D. Haskell
• Review of the Foundations of Norms in Islamic Jurisprudence and Theology By Omar Farahat. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 256. $99.99 (cloth); $80.00 (digital). ISBN: 9781108476768. by Sami Al-Daghistani
• Answering the Call of Conscience by Obie Clayton, Jr.

Read the latest essays from Canopy Forum, https://canopyforum.org:

• Biden and Francis, or to Caesar What is Caesar’s” by Rafael Domingo
• “Why Secular Society Desperately Needs the Recognition of Religious Holidays” by Bruce Ledewitz
• “Halloween in Jewish Law: Religious and Cultural Transformation” by Michael J. Broyde
• “The Mainstreaming of Alt-Right Media” by Sarah Riccardi-Swartz
• “Locke, Toleration and Political Participation – A New Manuscript” by Craig Walmsley

Online Course: Martyrs, Minorities, Faith And Fidelity: Exploring ‘Loyalty’ In Christianity And Islam
Deadline: January 11, 2022 

Loyalty is at the center of human life – and often death. Loyalty defines families and friendships, philosophies and faiths. It also creates enemies, divides nations, and inspires people to kill and die for their country or creed. Indeed, the nature and force of our loyalties to different people, ideas, and things shapes virtually every aspect of our lives. In this course, Professor Mona Siddiqui explores the polyvalent meanings of ‘loyalty’ in Christian and Islamic thought. Four twenty-minute lectures, recommended readings, and reflection questions provide insights about religious martyrdom, the challenges of diversity, struggles for justice and beauty, and the observance of religious rituals in modern contexts.  Join Professor Siddiqui and learners around the world to study of the problematic virtue of loyalty. Register here and learn more here.

Funding Opportunity: Emory Global Health Institute's 2022 Field Scholars Program
Deadline: February 21, 2022 

The Emory Global Health Institute (EGHI) annually funds multidisciplinary teams of students to conduct global health projects in collaboration with an Emory faculty member and in-country partner organization. The EGHI Field Scholars Awards Program typically funds projects that take place in low- or middle-income countries (LMICs), however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, EGHI will also accept project applications that take place anywhere in the United States, including Atlanta, so long as the project focuses on an underserved or vulnerable population.

Project work, whether it be virtually or in the field, will take place during summer 2022.

Job Opportunity: Digital Scholarship Support Team

Deadline: Rolling Basis

CSLR publishes Canopy Forum, a rapidly growing online publication focused on cutting-edge research and digital scholarship, and recently launched the Interactions podcast. Our student team assists with web-design and formatting, editing articles, developing marketing strategies, podcast recording/production, soliciting new articles and multimedia publications from leading scholars, and more. Students with an entrepreneurial spirit flourish at CSLR and have opportunities to develop skills and experience relevant to their specific career goals. We view our students as full team members with the potential to make substantive contributions to our Center’s mission. You will be treated as a professional, encouraged to grow, and expected to deliver results.

Successful applicants for this position will assist CSLR scholars with a range of tasks and projects; develop and format new forms of digital scholarship; perform administrative/office work; compile and organize contact lists of scholars and other leaders in our field of study; provide insights, ideas, and feedback about CSLR’s marketing and outreach strategies; support social media design and curation; and assist with other projects and administrative tasks. There may also be opportunities to participate in academic research with CSLR faculty and fellows.

Summer employees may work remotely and/or in the CSLR office suite at Emory Law School, depending partly on Emory’s evolving social distancing guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Find more information here.

Job Opportunity: Market Researcher for the “Study on Law and Ministry in the United States”

Deadline: Rolling Basis

The Center for the Study of Law and Religion (CSLR) at Emory University seeks highly motivated students to help identify and analyze existing products (books, courses, degree programs, podcasts, websites, law firms, etc.) in educational, publishing, and other spaces.

CSLR is conducting a large-scale study to better understand how Christian clergy in the United States interact with the law. As not-for-profit organizations, churches are governed by a wide range of local, state, and federal laws, including employment laws, tax laws, constitutional law, property laws, and more. The upcoming phase of this study will focus on understanding if and how the leaders of these organizations learn about the laws and regulations that affect their ministries.

Successful applicants for this position will perform market research to determine which “law and ministry” resources and training programs are currently available to clergy, church-related organizations, and seminary/theology students. This research will focus on collecting, organizing, and analyzing the following: online resources and websites; theology school and seminary curricula, continuing education, and other training programs for church leaders; books and other resources; law firms and legal service organizations specializing in providing legal counsel to churches and pastors; and more. Find more information here. 

Global threats to Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) are not new. However, as cyber capabilities, information diplomacy, at-scale data management and a convergence of wider technological capacities accelerate, new patterns of risk are emerging for religious minorities. These powerful, technology shaped dimensions of human rights are characterized by 1) Censorship, 2) Disinformation, and 3) Surveillance. 

As this new technoscape of coercion, control and nascent resistance grows, it adds to the complexity of analysis and response required of diplomacy, governments, nation-states, international law, civil society, private sector and other social actors. Religious leaders and marginalized belief communities, themselves under threat in many local contexts, stand perplexed by the scale and pace of the technological challenges which increasingly render old modes of human rights advocacy as irrelevant and in need of renewal.

•Abstracts of 500 to 1000 words are invited by 10 January 2022
• Decision by 14 January 2022
• Accepted papers of 5000 to 6500 words should be in presentable form by 14 March 2022.

Submissions and queries can be sent to Professor Francis Davis FRAI f.davis@bham.ac.uk. Learn more here.

Deadline: March 14, 2022

Religious freedom for prisoners in the United States is protected through the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).  Subject to safety and security concerns, prisoners may engage in various religious practices during their incarceration. Sometimes prisoners on death row ask for a spiritual adviser to be present in the execution chamber before the government puts them to death.

In an essay using the First Amendment and RLUIPA, discuss whether prisoners should have the right to have a religious adviser present in the execution chamber and what, if any, final religious practices a prisoner should be able to request.

Students must fill out this Google Form with essays (800-1200 words) uploaded within the form (further submission instructions, including an alternate method of submission for those without Google accounts, can be found in the Google Form). Submissions must be completed no later than March 14, 2022.

Requirements

1. Submitted essays should be in 12-point type, double-spaced. To ensure fairness, your name (or any other identifying info) should not appear on any page.
2. Essays must have a title at the top of the first page of the essay (do not use a title page).
3. Essays must be between 800-1,200 words, not counting the title and bibliography.
4. Sources must be used, cited and credited in a bibliography, consistent with an accepted citation style. Wikipedia may not be used as a source.

Essays failing to meet the requirements will not be judged. All essays become property of BJC.

Winners will be announced by the end of summer 2022. The first-place winner will be recognized at the BJC board meeting in October 2022. Entrants will hear from BJC by email after the winners are selected.

If you have questions, contact Director of Education Charles Watson Jr. at cwatson@BJConline.org.

Freedom From Religion Foundation Law Student Essay Contest (Freedom from Religion Foundation)

Deadline: March 15, 2022

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is delighted to announce its fourth annual essay competition for law school students.

Law students are invited to submit a no more than 1,500-word essay on why religious exemptions from vaccine requirements are not required. The contest will award $10,000 in prize money, with $4,000 for first place, $3,000 for second and $2,000 for third place, plus $500 discretionary awards for honorable mentions.

People who oppose Covid-19 vaccines for political or other reasons are now abusing religious exemptions in order to flout vaccine mandates. Against this backdrop, lawsuits have surged, challenging vaccine requirements on religious grounds and arguing that the First Amendment requires religious exemptions.

Entrants to the law school essay competition are being asked to craft an argument that religious exemptions from vaccine requirements are not legally required — addressing constitutional questions as well as other legal issues raised by such mandates. Learn more here.

2022 Annual Tenenbaum Lecture: Judaism and Climate Change: Environmental Ethics and Social Activism (Tam Institute for Jewish Studies)

Date: March 21st at 7:30 pm EST

The Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University will feature Prof. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson of Arizona State University as the speaker for this year’s Tenenbaum Family Lecture in Judaic Studies. The lecture, which will take place on Monday, Mar. 21 at 7:30pm, will address the topic: “Judaism and Climate Change: Environmental Ethics and Social Activism.” The program is tentatively scheduled for an in-person audience and will also be available to remote viewers on Zoom. 

Drawing on Tirosh-Samuelson’s broader work on the intersection of Judaism and ecology, the lecture will present climate change as the most significant challenge to the future of humanity and other life forms on Earth.  It will explore how, along with other world religions, Judaism has recognized the challenges posed by climate change and has inspired its own forms of religious environmentalism.  The lecture will identify the principles that guide Jewish environmental ethics and the characteristics of Jewish environmental activism.  Special attention will be paid to the relationship between religious and secular dimensions of Jewish climate advocacy that links ecological justice to social justice. Learn more here.

Deadline: Rolling Basis

The focus of the AJLR is on scholarship that displays a connection between law and religion. Contributions that are purely theological, sociological, or political will not be considered, but interdisciplinary work involving these fields in connection with law and religion are welcome. Articles involving any area of law may be considered, and it is anticipated that many of the articles received and published by the journal will involve the sub-disciplines of public law (involving constitutional claims of freedom of religion or religion-state neutrality), employment law (involving religious discrimination claims), private law (involving the corporate structures, taxation and charity law obligations, and property interests of religious entities), and international law (involving human rights guarantees). Articles from the sub-disciplines of legal history, comparative law, and law reform are also anticipated.

Submissions may include scholarly articles, book reviews, and contributions to a special topic forum. Submissions should be in standard Australian English and references (with footnote citations), should comply with the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th edition), and in MS Word format. Prospective authors are encouraged to include their institutional affiliation, a cover letter, or a CV. All submissions should be sent via e-mail to editorsAJLR@gmail.com. Learn more here. 

Deadline: Rolling Basis

The School of Law of the University of Nicosia, in cooperation with the PhD Programme on Human Rights, Society, and Multi-Level Governance offered by the Universities of Padova, Zagreb, Western Sydney, and Nicosia, announces the launch of its new journal, the Journal of the Sociology of Law and Religion (JSLR). The JLSR is peer-reviewed and shall serve as a forum where original research is presented, and discussion is shaped. The journal is published in the English language and is available online through an open-access platform. It welcomes original submissions and contributions in topics pertinent to the Sociology of Law and Religion widely defined and is published bi-annually.

The Sociology of Law and Religion includes the use of social science materials and approaches to the study of ‘law and religion’, the influence of sociology being either methodological or theoretical. The use of social theory, fieldwork, qualitative and quantitative research, or other tools leading to interdisciplinary, or multidisciplinary approaches amongst the fields of law, religion, and sociology is welcome. The journal aims to present original work, review the legislative, case law, and doctrinal development on law and religion, as well as focus on comparative papers, which would assess law and religion issues through the lens of social sciences. Learn more here. 

For more CFPs and events, see "Law and Religion Headlines," compiled by the International Center for Law and Religion Studies: https://www.religlaw.org/headlines.