Center for Law and Religion at St. John's University School of Law

New from Legal Spirits: In this short take, Mark Movsesian discusses the recent controversy over the Defense Department’s religious affiliation codes for service members.

The initial list designated many groups as “Christian,” but not the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After objections, DOD revised the list to remove the Christian designation altogether.

The episode explores what the controversy reveals about religious classification, government neutrality, and the challenges of liberal pluralism in a religiously diverse society.

Listen here:

Legal Spirits 078: A Short Take on Religion in the Military - LAW AND RELIGION FORUM The Defense Department recently created a controversy by revising its list of religious affiliation codes for service members and failing to designate the LDS Church as Christian. After objections, DOD removed the Christian designation from the list altogether. In this Legal Spirits Short Take, Cent...

Be sure to check out the latest Around the Web collection of law and religion news stories on our website!

Visit the link in our bio to read this week’s issue of Around the Web, featuring important law-and-religion news stories unfolding around the world.

It’s been a productive 2025–2026 academic year at the Denise ’90 and Michael ’91 Mattone Center for Law and Religion, and we’re pleased to share some highlights.

Our animated video series, Landmark Cases in Religious Freedom, continued on YouTube with episodes on West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette and Everson v. Board of Education — and has now reached 478,000 views and counting. Legal Spirits is going strong as well, with 77 episodes and 21,600 listens to date. The Law and Religion Forum blog had 55,000 views over the past academic year.

This year, the Center also hosted a regional conference of the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies, welcomed Judge Ioannis Ktistakis of the European Court of Human Rights, sponsored our annual symposium with the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, co-hosted an international conference in Seoul and Kyoto, and hosted the ninth edition of the International Moot Court Competition in Law and Religion at St. John’s Rome campus.

We are grateful to our students, alumni, faculty colleagues, friends, and supporters for making this work possible.
Read the full annual report here:

email : Webview : Year in Review Newsletter: Mattone Center for Law and Religion It’s been a productive 2025-2026 academic year at St. John’s Denise ’90 and Michael ’91 Mattone Center for Law and Religion and we’re pleased to share some highlights and achievements with you.

In AtW: Bishop James Massa, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, responded VP Vance's criticism of Pope Leo XIV, the Justice Department released a report concluding that the Biden DOJ "engaged in biased enforcement of the FACE Act," Ohio Attorney General David Yost filed suit seeking to prevent Hebrew Union College (HUC) from closing its 150-year-old Cincinnati rabbinical school, and more!

Around the Web - LAW AND RELIGION FORUM Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

New publication from Center Director Mark Movsesian examining human dignity in comparative constitutional law. Engaging Andrea Pin's "Dignity in Judgment," Movsesian explores how courts across jurisdictions define dignity—and why a secular, autonomy-based understanding predominates in practice. Link below:

"Dignity and The Judge" by Mark L. Movsesian - Canopy Forum Among the Sierra Nevada, California by Albert Bierstadt (US-PD). This article is part of our Book Review Roundtable on Andrea Pin’s book, Dignity in Judgement: Constitutional Adjudication in Comparative Perspective (2025).If you’d like to check out other reviews in this series, click here. Human...

Visit the link in our bio to read this week’s issue of Around the Web, featuring important law-and-religion news stories unfolding around the world. 🖥️✍🏻📖