Law and Magic Blog

Nonbelievers On the National Political Stage

On her April 8th State of the Union show, Candy Crowley asked both Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver (D-Mo), and Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, whether a "nonbeliever" could run (I assume she meant a realistic campaign) and even be elected to national office (President or Senator). Mr. Cleaver responded that he didn't think a "respectable atheist" would walk around with anything labeled "In God We Trust" in his pocket, a comment I don't understand. Is he saying that atheists don't or shouldn't use our national currency? The "In God We Trust" on the currency issue has been litigated, unsuccessfully. But he also said, if I understand him correctly that people who have the media's attention need to speak out about discrimination against nonbelievers. Mr. Reed responded that he thought it would be possible, and that he's optimistic about the electability of nonbelievers.  Link to the segment here.

Jesus On a Handmade Tortilla

Another example of a sighting (and a siting) of an image of Jesus--this time during an Ash Wednesday meal. David Sandoval says he spotted the image on his mother's handmade tortilla. Also covered here at News4 (Albuerquerque, NM). Just as an aside, look at that menu at the Sandoval house: mashed potatoes, gravy, chicken and homemade tortillas--yum!

Something On the Nones

From today's New York Times, Eric Weiner's opinion piece on the Nones, those who aren't atheists, but aren't quite religious. They're undecided.They're still seeking. They're Seekers (my term, not his).  Mr. Weiner offers his explanation of why, and what the Nones are looking for. He suggests it's rationalism, humor, a view of the world and their place in it that shows them how to find answers that reconcile the big questions with the little ones. And, he says, they don't like all the anger in the public square that we get now over the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause. After 275 years, is the age of the Enlighenment having a Renaissance?

Secularizing Marriage and Divorce

Sarah Beresford has written an interesting piece on the justification for eliminating religious rites from marriage and divorce. It's available on the web in the Web Journal of Current Legal Issues. Below is the summary of her article.

This article explores some of the legal and religious aspects of marriage and divorce in England and Wales and America. It argues that legal marriage and divorce (if it is to continue to exist as a legal concept), should be purely secular and civil. In other words, there should be no religious involvement of any kind at the formation or demise of a legally regulated relationship such as marriage. This article further suggests that the state and the law should not facilitate or promote religiosity in marriage or divorce, nor should religious marriages should have any legal force. Instead of continuing to encourage religiosity in marriage and divorce, Law should instead look to ways of strengthening the secularisation of marriage and divorce.

Sarah Beresford, University of Lancaster, Seeking Secularism: Resisting Religiosity in Marriage and Divorce--A Comparative Study of England and America, 3 Web JCLI (2010).

 

A Pasta Strainer On His Noodle

Austrian Niko Alm has finally won the right to wear a pasta strainer not just where-ever, but while the cops take his photo for his driver's license. After three years of fighting the good fight, he has won the battle. As the BBC reports, Mr. Alm is a Pastafarian--a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and alleges that the strainer is part of his religious attire.

Mr. Alm isn't stopping here. He's driving on--to obtain recognition of the Church as an approved faith in Austria.

A link to Mr. Alm's blog (auf Deutsch).

Deconstructing/Reconstructing Stonehenge

At 1:16 EST summer arrives in the US; folks have been celebrating at Stonehenge since the summer solstice began in the UK today. Things have been fairly quiet despite some drug busts. Jonathan Jones objects to the annual practice here, pointing out that the invented Druidic/hippie/Wiccan ritual bear no resemblance to anything we can discern that might have gone on at the place when it was built. So why allow the festival? "[B]ecause otherwise there would be public violence on Salisbury Plain."

Meanwhile, Penny English, University of Anglia Law School, both a lawyer and an archaeologist, investigates the legal and social questions involved here in her article Disputing Stonehenge: Law and Access To a National Symbol, published at 1 Entertainment Law 1 (Summer 2002).

I'd suggest that Stonehenge's meaning, whatever it might have been when its creators made it centuries ago, has certainly changed. The creators are gone and we are here. Many people who celebrate the summer soltice have now constructed and reconstructed meanings for it, some of them magical, and are fighting over what those meanings are, and how to reconcile them. Is the monument astronomical? Religious? Agricultural? Two of these? Three? None? To the people dancing and chanting on Salisbury Plain, it doesn't seem to matter. I don't think they're deconstructing Stonehenge so much as reconstructing meaning and creating their own magic. If they want to take the position that their meanings create a contemporary use for the monument, that's fine with me. If, however, they want to convince me that those meanings are the only meaning Stonehenge has, they have a long way to go.

Another Oregon Couple Convicted Of Failing To Provide Medical Care For Child

Yet another couple who are members of the Followers of Christ Church, which follows faith healing traditions, have been convicted of failing to provide medical treatment for a child. An Oregon jury found Timothy and Rebecca Wyland guilty of felony criminal mistreatment for failing to take their young daughter to medical professionals who could treat her for vision problems. The little girl, now 18 months old, still lives with her parents but is a ward of the state. Doctors say her condition has improved significantly under traditional care.

In the past few years, other members of the Church have been convicted of negligent homicide and manslaughter for failing to obtain treatment for their children. Some Oregon lawmakers seem to favor the removal of a ministerial exception to homicide charges, and have introduced House Bill 2721 to respond to criticism of those believers who turn to spiritual healing rather than traditional medicine to take care of medical problems. More coverage from the Oregonian of Followers of Christ Church trials here.

A Bibliography of Spiritualism

Emily Mann provides a selected bibliography of spiritualism here. It includes discussion of the origins of the movement, and annotations of sources (print and online materials), mostly secondary sources, but some primary materials. Very nice for those wanting to get started doing research in the subject.

Law, Language, and Magic

From Jonathan Yovel, a piece on the significance, meaning, and use of language in law and magic.

Jonathan Yovel, Yale Law School & University of Haifa, Faculty of Law, In the Beginning Was the Word: Paradigms of Language and Normativity in Law, Philosophy, and Theology, 5 Mountbattan Journal of Legal Studies 5-33 (2001). Here is the abstract.

This essay attempts to delineate, trace, and reconstruct the main features of three interacting language paradigms significant in legal discourse, practice and theory: rhetoric, representationalism, and performativity. The examples discussed are narratives of institutionalized and customary law that share linguistic attributes with literary forms and theological puzzles. Law, as a complex linguistic activity, is thus placed in a long tradition of linguistic theory ranging from Plato and Protagoras to Wittgenstein, Austin and the linguistic turn (Sapir-Whorf); as well as supernatural uses of law, exercised both by divine fiat and lesser practices - namely the linguistic aspects of magic - especially in determining rights and settling disputes.

Download the full text from SSRN at the link, or from the journal here.

Trying Animals

Peter T. Leeson, George Mason University Department of Economics, has published Animal Trials. Here's the abstract.

For 250 years

 French, Italian, and Swiss ecclesiastic courts tried insects and rodents for property crimes as legal persons under the same laws and according to the same procedures they used to try actual persons. I argue that the Catholic Church used animal trials to increase tithe revenues where tithe evasion threatened to erode them. Animal trials achieved this by bolstering citizens' belief in the validity of Church punishments for tithe evasion: estrangement from God through sin, excommunication, and anathema. Animal trials permitted ecclesiastics to evidence their supernatural sanctions' legitimacy regardless of these trials' outcomes. They strengthened citizens' belief that the Church's imprecations were real, allowing ecclesiastics to reclaim jeopardized tithe revenue.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Animal trials weren't that uncommon. See also

Esther Cohen, The Crossroads of Justice: Law and Culture in Late Medieval France (Brill, 1993), at 100-133.

Esther Cohen, Law, Folklore, and Animal Lore, Past and Present (1986) at 110.

Jesse Elvin, Responisibility, 'Bad Luck,' and Delinquent Animals: Law as a Means of Explaining Tragedy, Journal of Criminal Law, December 2009.

E. P. Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (Faber and Faber, 1987, repr. 1906).

Jen Girgen, The Historical and Contemporary Prosecution and Punishment of Animals.

Philip Jamieson, Animal Liability In Early Law, 19 Cambrian Law Review 45 (1988).

Nicholas Humphrey, Bugs and Beasts Before the Law, in The Mind Made Flesh 235-254 (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Warning: If you are an animal lover, read with extreme caution, or don't read at all. The accounts of what people have done to innocent animals, out of stupidity, ignorance, folly, narrow-mindedness, or religious fervor, are truly stomach turning.