Trey Dimsdale serves as counsel for First Liberty Institute (FLI) and executive director of the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, an FLI initiative focused on education and cultural advocacy for freedom.
As an ecclesial model, Anglicanism has until recently managed controversy and diversity better than almost any other. The generous boundaries of the tradition have space for a wide spectrum of expressions, from low-church evangelical to the Anglo-Catholicism of the Oxford Movement to charismatic, nonliturgical modern worship in individual parishes like London’s Holy Trinity Brompton to local expressions influenced by the best parts of regional culture throughout Africa and Asia. Continue Reading...
Depending on one’s perspective, religious freedom was either born or died with the founding of the United States of America. The colonial powers of Europe of the late 18th century had dominant religious majorities and established churches. Continue Reading...
When Judge Antonin Scalia was confirmed to a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States on September 16, 1986, no senator voted in opposition. He was confirmed by a vote of 98-to-0, a margin completely unthinkable 30 years later. Continue Reading...
Earlier this week, Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist Linda Greenhouse came out of retirement on the opinion page of her former paper to warn Americans that their nation is now on the cusp of seeing religion “elevate[d] … over all other elements of civil society.” Continue Reading...
To my great embarrassment, I must admit that prior to going to law school I enjoyed the quasi-scripted drama of Judge Judy. The litigants’ outrageous circumstances and colorful personalities distract viewers into believing that the legal issues are complex. Continue Reading...
There is almost no institution in the past 100 years that has more profoundly shaped American public life than the Supreme Court. As a result, the composition of the Supreme Court has become one of the most prominent issues in every campaign season—whether it is the presidential election cycle or the midterm congressional elections. Continue Reading...
Each morning’s headlines in the British press bring new details of parties happening inside Boris Johnson’s government while the rest of the United Kingdom and much of the world was locked down in isolation because of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2020 and well into 2021. Continue Reading...
Earlier this month the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Carson v. Makin. The appellants in this case, co-represented by the Institute for Justice and my firm First Liberty Institute, are parents and students in Maine who have been denied a state benefit available to residents of rural areas unable to support publicly funded secondary schools. Continue Reading...
The difference between a “Christian organization” and an “organization that does Christian things” might seem like a distinction without a difference. But it is precisely this difference that is at the heart of the question presented to the U.S. Continue Reading...
It is extremely uncommon for me to read anything published by Glamour. In 2018, however, a first-person profile by Clara Spera caught my attention. Spera, a Harvard-trained attorney, shared with readers a personal portrait of her grandmother, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Continue Reading...
