Summer 2010 has been extraordinarily busy for everyone at the International Center for Law and Religion Studies. Conferences, presentations, book launches, and training sessions have taken Directors Cole Durham, Brett Scharffs, and Elizabeth Sewell away for much of the summer, concluding with a first-of-its kind three-week training program on religion and the rule of law conducted at Peking University by Professors Durham and Scharffs. Meanwhile, other Center personnel, assisted by student research fellows, visiting student externs, and an expanding network of legal ... More

The International Center for Law and Religion Studies announces the publication of the volume Religion and the Secular State / La Religion et l’État laïque: Interim Reports, prepared for and issued upon the occasion of The XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law, held 25 July - 1 August 2010 in Washington, D.C. The 832-page volume represents the work of the General Reporters for the Congress topic Religion and the Secular State, Professor W. Cole Durham, Jr. Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University ... More

The 2010 Student Research Fellows have returned to school from their summer externships worldwide, and we continue to be grateful for their help in our demanding ongoing projects here at the Center, which they undertake in addition to the demands of law school. This year's Fellows and their assignments are Keith Barlow - Salt Lake City, Utah; Heath Becker - Guatemala City, Guatemala; M. Preston Gardner - São Paulo, Brazil ... More

The Center is grateful for the excellent work of the 2010 Summer Research Externs, who came to Provo from nine U.S. law schools. The these outstanding students provided invaluable assistance this summer with our many research and writing projects. We are especially grateful for their extensive help with the the annual update of the 3500-page Treatise, Religious Organizations ... More

ICLRS Director Cole Durham and Associate Director Elizabeth Sewell, along with ICLRS Academic Advisory Board Member Tore Lindholm of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo, participated in the launch of the Russian translation of Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Deskbook during events in ... More

The International Center for Law and Religion Studies is pleased to welcome and congratulate its inaugural class of Research Fellows—an official network for volunteers who are interested in assisting the Center on selected projects and otherwise promoting the work of the Center through building relationships with key members of the religious freedom community and awareness of religious freedom principles. Research Fellows complete a formal training curriculum and commit to a one- or two-year term. This select charter group of dedicated volunteers completed the Research Fellows ... More

Professor W. Cole Durham, Jr., Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University and Professor Javier Martinez-Torrón of the Law Faculty of Complutense University in Madrid and member of the ICLRS Academic Advisory Board participated in The XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law, held from July 25th through August 1st 2010 in Washington ... More

Professor W. Cole Durham, Jr. and Professor Elizabeth A. Sewell, Director and Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University, joined a large number of scholars from across Ukraine and Russia, regional religious affairs officials from Ukraine, and scholars from Western Europe for a conference "Democracy and Religious Freedom: Old and ... More

W. Cole Durham, Jr., Susa Young Gates Professor of Law and Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University, spoke at the 8 August 2010 afternoon session of the Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association in San Francisco. The topic of the session was "The First Amendment’s Religion Clauses: Universal Norm or Peculiarly American?" The session was co-sponsored by the General Practice ... More

ICLRS Director Cole Durham and Associate Director Brett Scharffs were among a dozen foreign scholars invited by Peking University to participate in a first-of-its kind summer training program on religion and the rule of law held 3-22 August 2010 in Beijing. The program was sponsored by the Center for Constitutional and Administrative Law at Peking University, under the direction of Professor Zhang Qianfan, and the Pu Shi Institute for Social Sciences, whose director Liu Peng is one of China’s leading ... More

The International Center for Law and Religion Studies is pleased to announce the Keynote Speakers for the Seventeenth Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, "Religion in Contemporary Legal Systems." This year's distinguished speakers are renowned jurist Dr. Tahir Mahmood, Founder-Chairman, Amity Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and Immediate Past Member, Law Commission of India, and ... More

The Seventeenth Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, "Religion in Contemporary Legal Systems," will be held 3-6 October 2010 at Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School in Provo, Utah. This year's Symposium will bring together more than 70 distinguished delegates from 40 countries to discuss the topics "Islam in Contemporary Legal Systems," "Religion, Law, and the Encounter with Secularism," and "The Challenge of Protecting ... More

In diverse judgments in the cases of Obst v. Germany (no. 425/03) and Schüth v. Germany (no. 1620/03), the European Court of Human Rights on 23 September 2010 "for the first time addressed the dismissal of Church employees on grounds of conduct falling within the sphere of ... More

The critical value of working together to promote common causes such as the principles of religious freedom was a primary motivational factor addressed by Gayla Sorenson, Senior Fellow for the International Center for Law and Religious Freedom, as she participated in the panel discussion, “Digging Deep: Personal and Religious Motivations for Interfaith Work.” The panel was part of the North American Interfaith Network’s annual conference—Connect 2010: Many Faiths-One Family, Building a World of Harmony—which was held 24-27 July 2010 in ... More

In a strongly worded opinion which accepted the plaintiffs' arguments and rejected all defense claims, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker struck down California's Proposition 8, the ballot measure banning homosexual marriage, which was passed by a narrow margin of California voters in November 2008. Walker's 4 August 2010 ruling in Perry et al. v. Schwarzenegger et al., a case brought by two homosexual couples in San Francisco, asserts that the measure violates the federal constitutional rights of gays and lesbians to marry the partners of their choice. Proposition 8 ... More

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has ruled in favor of plaintiffs-appellants American Atheists, Inc. et al. and against the state of Utah in a case involving the display of 12-foot-high metal crosses erected alongside Utah highways in memory of fallen Utah Highway Patrol troopers. The 18 August 2010 ruling reverses the district court ruling in American Atheists v. Davenport to find ... More

Comments of ICLRS Associate Director Brett G. Scharffs concerning the May 2010 Canadian court ruling in Heintz v. Christian Horizons have been quoted in the 20 August 2010 online edition of Christianity Today. The case, from the Ontario Divisional Court, involved ... More