In 1981 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that women could be exempt from the military draft since they were excluded bat duty. But in 2015 Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced he would lift the military’s ban on women serving bat, a move that allowed hundreds of thousands of women to serve in front-line positions during wartime. The next year the top officers in the Army and Marine Corps followed that policy to its logical conclusion and told Congress that it...

The Roman Catholic Church cannot hold its employees accountable if they break their contractual obligation to live by the Church’s teachings, a German court has ruled. In an Orwellian twist, the court ruled that firing a baptized Catholic from a Catholic institution for violating Catholic teachings constitutes religious discrimination. Germany’s Federal Labor Court (the Bundesarbeitsgericht) decided on Wednesday that St. Vinzenz Hospital in Düsseldorf impermissibly fired a doctor who got divorced and remarried. The nonprofit hospital, which is under the...

This week, roughly 19,000 West Virginia teachers went on strike, closing down every public school in the state in a united resistance against educational choice. Now, after only two days, the strike is over, with the legislation in question dead on arrival in the state House. It marks a defeat against student opportunity and a victory for union-induced conformity and the dismal status quo of public education in West Virginia—a state that consistently sits at the bottom of nation-wide education...

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has denounced an increasingly prevalent working relationship as “evil.” However, a new report shows the condition he abjured as immoral has been exacerbated by another economic practice that he favors and advocates – that is, by the archbishop’s standards, his fiscal advice inadvertently increases “evil.” Archbishop Welby made headlines last October for a speech in which he excoriated Amazon for not paying a “real living wage” and calling zero-hour contracts“an ancient evil.” As it...

Is it morally permissible to have children? That question – which should have gone out with “What’s your sign?” or “Who shot J.R.?” in the 1980s – e roaring back in a United States in which the birthrate continually hits new lows. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked the question in a video she posted on social media this weekend. AOC fears that children will degrade the environment through increasing our collective carbon footprint, and that a world ravaged by climate change would...

Having visited Nicaragua just prior to and immediately following the elections which initially ousted the Sandinistas from power in 1990, I was struck by the news this week from Rome. Evidently sometime in the last few weeks, when exactly remains unclear, Pope Francis lifted the canonical penalties imposed by Pope St. John Paul II on Father Ernesto Cardenal in 1984. Father Cardenal was a colorful character who had been suspended from his ministry for holding the cabinet position of Minister...

t is inherently unjust to point to any one “wild” market, any single “greedy” industry captain and conclude that the entire system essentially immoral, wrong and sinful. This is what is called, idiomatically speaking, “throwing the baby out with bath water.” Read More… In a recent move that garnered little public attention amidst the tense media coverage enveloping this week’s Vatican summit on clerical sexual abuse and the protection of minors, Pope Francis restored priestly faculties to a Nicaraguan Jesuit...

What just happened? On Wednesday the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Timbs v. Indiana that the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution applies to state governments and that some state civil asset forfeitures violate the Clause. The implication, as legal scholar Ilya Somin explains, is that “the ruling could help curb abusive asset forfeitures, which enable law enforcement agencies to seize property that they suspect might have been used in a crime—including in...

For over 1,100 years, a unique “heritage breed” of Icelandic goats has sustained the country’s population, serving as a staple of cuisine for centuries. Yet as dietaryneeds and preferences shifted, the goat population slowly dwindled, reaching the brink of extinction at under 100 animals by the late 20th century. Although one might imagine the solution to be found in a government protection program or a widespread endangered-species campaign, one Icelander saw a different path—focusing not just on the restoration of...

This past weekend in Forbes, Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s Managing Director, International, offered some perspectives on the current situation in Venezuela. Basing his analysis on traditional principles of justice, he outlines some important points to keep in mind in any project of transitioning from socialism to a more just political and economic model. Liberation should ing soon for Venezuela. After liberation e celebration. Almost immediately e justice. Punishing the culprits will be difficult, but it will be easier than making restitution...