legal issues

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 ›

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 ›

[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 ›

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 ›

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 ›