legal issues

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Michael Behe vs. Joshua Swamidass on Unbelievable

The Kitzmiller v. Dover Trial and Intelligent Design Fifteen Years On

In 2005 a high profile trial saw the Dover School District taken to court for promoting Intelligent Design (ID) as an alternative theory to evolution in classrooms. 15 years on Mike Behe, a prominent biochemist and ID advocate who took the stand as a defence witness, talks about what the case meant for the ID movement. Joshua Swamidass is a Read More ›

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Holly on a tree
Photo by Annie Spratt at Unsplash
Photo by Annie Spratt at Unsplash

Darwin’s Poisoned Tree

This article appears in the Fall, 2015 issue of the legal journal Trinity Law Review, Vol. 21 (1), pp. 130-233, published by Trinity Law School. Click here for a PDF of the full article. Introduction The teaching of biological origins in public schools is a contentious and highly debated area of the law. If there is any fixed star of Read More ›

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ID is Constitutional and has Educational and Legal Merit

[Editor’s note: This article was posted as part of a series of articles both for and against ID at OpposingViews.com.] “The part of Kitzmiller that finds ID not to be science is unnecessary, unconvincing, not particularly suited to the judicial role, and even perhaps dangerous both to science and to freedom of religion”1 Jay D. Wexler, Anti-ID legal scholar at Read More ›

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Presenter Giving Presentation at Conference with Investors and MBA Students. Speech during Workshop Teaching Business Tech. Executive Coach Training Corporate Manager. Businesswoman at Pitch Event.
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Teaching About Evolution in the Public Schools

A new approach to teaching about evolution has been developed to meet the test of good science and satisfy the courts’ standards of constitutionality. "Teach the controversy" is tje idea is to use scientific disagreements over evolution to help students learn more about evolution, and about how science deals with controversy. Read More ›
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Law, Darwinism, and Public Education

Legal scholar and former Discovery Fellow Francis J. Beckwith recounts the legal history of court battles over the teaching of biological origins. Though many thought that the landmark Supreme Court case Edwards v. Aguillard would permanently settle these questions by ruling creationism unconstitutional, Beckwith observes that intelligent design poses a new challenge to legal scholars. Beckwith, who has published about Read More ›

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Foosball figures playing defense
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Those Defensive Darwinists

The first court trial over the theory of intelligent design is now over, with a ruling expected by the end of the year. What sparked the legal controversy? Before providing two weeks of training in modern evolutionary theory, the Dover, Pa., School District briefly informed students that if they wanted to learn about an alternative theory of biological origins, intelligent design, they could read a book about it in the school library. The lawsuit is only the latest in a series of attempts to silence the growing controversy over contemporary Darwinian theory. Read More ›
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Senior teacher teaching biology to high school students.
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It’s Constitutional But Not Smart to Teach Intelligent Design in Schools

A legal battle is currently raging over whether it is constitutional to teach the theory of intelligent design (ID) in public school science classrooms. The controversy started when the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, required science teachers to read a 4-paragraph disclaimer that mentions intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinian evolutionary theory as an explanation for biological origins. Within Read More ›

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book lot on black wooden shelf
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The Roots and Remedy of Judicial Imperialism

Legal pragmatism traces its origins to the early decades of the twentieth century, when America was wrestling with the implications of Darwin's theory of evolution. Arguably the most significant impact of the Scopes trial was on legal philosophy itself. Read More ›

Teaching the Origins Controversy

David K. DeWolf, Special Discovery Institute Report, subtitle: A Guide for the Perplexed, NULL Read More ›

Teaching the Origins Controversy

One can hardly imagine a more contentious issue in the American culture wars than the debate over how biological origins should be taught in the public schools. On the one hand, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Center for Science Education, and the American Civil Liberties Union have insisted that any departure from a strictly Darwinian approach to the …