What’s the law on vaccine exemptions? A religious liberty expert explains

‘Many schools, businesses and governments requiring vaccination have offered religious exemptions. Some are loath to challenge people’s claims that getting the shot goes against their beliefs for fear of being sued, but organizations have come up with a variety of ways to assess claimants’ sincerity. But the legal basis of Americans’ supposed right to a religious exemption to vaccination is less clear than such policies’ popularity would suggest.

‘As a lawyer and scholar who focuses on religious liberties, I have supported religious exemptions for a baker who refused to create a cake for a same-sex wedding, a family-owned business that refused to provide emergency contraception to its employees, a Muslim prisoner who was obligated to grow a beard and many others.

‘Even so, I believe that under the general law of religious liberty – including the Constitution and state and federal religious freedom laws – the government has an easy case to refuse religious exemptions from vaccines against infectious disease.’

Read here (Religious News Service, Sept 15, 2021)

What Europeans have learned from a year of pandemic

‘From the first case diagnosed a year ago at a hospital in northern Italy to the empty shops, restaurants and stadiums of Europe's cities, the lives of Europeans have been changed forever. Curbs on movement have forced every country and society to adapt its rules and rethink its culture. There have been hard truths and unexpected innovations in a year that changed Europe.

• Restrictions are tough for societies used to freedom
• Experts are essential, but mistakes have been made
• The EU wasn't set up for a pan-European health crisis
• Societies have responded in different ways
• A Europe without borders is fine in theory
• Hard truths about how we slaughter animals
• Europeans embraced lifestyle change in different ways

Read here (BBC, Feb 20, 2021)

The pandemic's digital shadow

‘The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating a dramatic decline in global internet freedom. For the 10th consecutive year, users have experienced an overall deterioration in their rights, and the phenomenon is contributing to a broader crisis for democracy worldwide. Three notable trends punctuated an especially dismal year for internet freedom... First, political leaders used the pandemic as a pretext to limit access to information... Second, authorities cited COVID-19 to justify expanded surveillance powers and the deployment of new technologies that were once seen as too intrusive... The third trend has been the transformation of a slow-motion “splintering” of the internet into an all-out race toward “cyber sovereignty,” with each government imposing its own internet regulations in a manner that restricts the flow of information across national borders...

‘Global internet freedom has declined for the 10th consecutive year: 26 countries’ scores worsened during this year’s coverage period, while 22 countries registered net gains. The largest declines occurred in Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan, followed by India, Ecuador, and Nigeria. A record number of countries featured deliberate disruptions to internet service. On the positive side, Sudan and Ukraine experienced the largest improvements, followed by Zimbabwe. A raft of court rulings shored up human rights online in countries ranked Free, Partly Free, and Not Free alike. The United States ranked seventh overall, while Iceland was once again the top performer. For the sixth consecutive year, China was found to have the worst conditions for internet freedom.

‘Freedom on the Net assesses internet freedom in 65 countries around the globe, accounting for 87 percent of the world’s internet users. This report, the 10th in its series, covers developments between June 2019 and May 2020. More than 70 analysts contributed to this year’s report, using a standard methodology to determine each country’s internet freedom score on a 100-point scale, based on 21 indicators pertaining to obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights. Freedom on the Net also identifies global trends related to the impact of information and communication technologies on democracy. The data underpinning this year’s trends, in-depth reports on each of the countries surveyed, and the full methodology can be found here.’

Read here (Freedom House, October 2020)

In a pandemic we learn again what Sartre meant by being free

‘The pandemic also teaches us about freedom in ways that go beyond Sartre’s discussion of the individual. Politically, using Isaiah Berlin’s distinction, we talk of the ‘negative liberty’ to go about our business without restraint, and the ‘positive liberty’ to do the things that give us the possibility to flourish and maximise our potential. For example, a society where there is no compulsory schooling gives parents the negative liberty to educate their children as they wish. But, generally speaking, this doesn’t give the child the positive liberty to have a decent education.

‘Over recent decades in the West, negative liberty has been in the ascendancy and positive liberty has been tarred with the brush of the nanny state. What we should have learned in 2020 is that without health services, effective regulation and sometimes strict rules, our negative freedom is useless and even sometimes destructive. Without state ‘interference’, many more lives would have been lost, jobs destroyed and businesses ruined. We now have an opportunity to reset the balance between negative and positive liberty...’

Read here (Psyche, Sept 30, 2020)

In a pandemic we learn again what Sartre meant by being free

‘One of the most powerful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, after its terrible toll on human life, has been on our liberty. Around the world, people’s movements have been severely curtailed, tracked and monitored. This has had an impact on our abilities to earn a living, study and even be with loved ones at the end of their lives. Freedom, it seems, is one of this virus’s biggest casualties.

‘But an article by Jean-Paul Sartre for The Atlantic in 1944 makes me question whether this is a straightforward tale of loss. The French philosopher summed up his thesis in the line: ‘Never were we freer than under the German occupation.’ Sartre’s core insight was that it is only when we are physically stopped from acting that we fully realise the true extent and nature of our freedom. If he is right, then the pandemic is an opportunity to relearn what it means to be free.

‘Of course, our situation is not nearly as extreme as it was for the French under occupation, who, as Sartre said, ‘had lost all our rights, beginning with the right to talk’. Still, like most of us, I have at times found myself unable to do almost everything I had taken for granted. During the strictest lockdown period, nights out at theatres, concert halls and cinemas were cancelled. I couldn’t go for a walk in the countryside, relax in a bar or restaurant, sit on a park bench, visit anyone, even leave my home more than once a day.’

Read here (Aeon, Sept 30, 2020)