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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United States v. Brown

Docket: 19-1919

Opinion Date: April 13, 2020

Judge: Raymond W. Gruender

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The Eighth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for possession of a firearm. The court held that defendant was not denied his Sixth Amendment right to counsel during a critical stage of the proceedings, because he clearly and unequivocally asserted his right to self-representation. Furthermore, the district court did not err in allowing defendant to proceed pro se with his public defender as stand-by counsel. Even assuming that defendant was denied his right to counsel, the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, defendant was without counsel during the direct examination of one witness at the motion to suppress hearing. The court concluded that defendant failed to point to any deficiencies in counsel's cross-examination of the first witness or her examination of the subsequent witnesses, nor does he argue that his motion to suppress would have been granted had counsel performed the initial cross-examination of the Government's witness.