Religions Harm People

LESLIE C. GRIFFIN

UNLV Boyd School of Law professor Leslie C. Griffin points out ways in which religions harm people—manifested today as an insistence on exemptions to social COVID-19 distancing orders. Griffin argues that telling the truth about religion should not be viewed as a form of discrimination and endorses Katherine Stewart’s recent book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, which provides a detailed explanation of how the Religious Right has used its power to advance religion-based government in harmful ways.

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Conservative Authoritarianism Comes Out of the Shadows

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—comments on Harvard Law Professor Adrian Vermeule’s essay “Beyond Originalism,” which Sarat argues brings conservative authoritarianism out of the shadows. Sarat describes Vermeule as a modern-day Machiavelli, offering advice to the governing class and laying out a theory of governance Vermeule calls “common-good constitutionalism” but which in reality elevates the “common good” above individual goods in a manner antithetical to freedom, pluralism, and democracy.

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Friends of Danny DeVito, et al v. Wolf

Docket: 68 MM 2020

Opinion Date: April 13, 2020

Judge: Donohue

Areas of Law: Business Law, Constitutional Law, Government & Administrative Law

Petitioners were four Pennsylvania businesses and one individual who sought extraordinary relief from Governor Wolf’s March 19, 2020 order compelling the closure of the physical operations of all non-life-sustaining business to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (“COVID-19”). The businesses of the Petitioners were classified as non-life-sustaining. In an Emergency Application for Extraordinary Relief, Petitioners raised a series of statutory and constitutional challenges to the Governor's order, contending the Governor lacked any authority to issue it and that, even if he did have such statutory authority, it violates various of their constitutional rights. Petitioners asserted the exercise of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s King’s Bench jurisdiction was not only warranted but essential given the unprecedented scope and consequence of the Executive Order on businesses in the Commonwealth. Exercising King's Bench jurisdiction, the Supreme Court concluded Petitioners could not establish any constitutional bases for their challenges. The claim for relief was therefore denied.