For: Religion and American Culture                                     Whose ‘Reality-Based’ Community?   How we explore the various intersections of religion and politics in contemporary America depends to a considerable extent upon how we define both terms. We know, for example, that people who attend church services more frequently are more likely to vote Republican. Whether frequent [...]

                              Social Change, Public Policy and Law                                                         Abstract   Public administration practices and public policies are inevitably rooted in the philosophical assumptions that animate a particular society’s legal structures. The thesis of this paper is that certain constitutive decisions—particularly decisions allocating authority for public and private decision-making—will increase [...]

In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, reforming welfare “as we know it.” Among its provisions was a section called “Charitable Choice,” requiring states to contract with faith-based social service providers on the same basis as they contract with other nonprofits. The bill specified that “pervasively sectarian” organizations were not [...]

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Laws governing the psychiatric hospitalization of minors vary considerably from state to state.