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Israel’s Death Penalty Law: “Jewish and Democratic”?
by Ori Aronson
On 30 March 2026, in the midst of Israel’s latest war with Iran, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed the “Death Penalty for Terrorists Law.” The new Law imposes the death penalty on terrorists tried in either Israeli civilian courts or military courts in the West Bank, and it stipulates new rules as to the carrying out of a sentence of execution. The Law breaks with Israel’s longstanding rejection, both de jure and de facto, of the death penalty, an exceptional punishment used only once ever in the state’s history, against a Nazi criminal. The Law signifies the ascent of nationalist and populist politics in Israel in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 attacks and the traumatic hostage crisis that ensued. It is a troubling retrenchment from Israel’s commitment to Jewish and democratic values and is likely to invoke a contested constitutional debate as its validity now goes before the Supreme Court.
In its landmark 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause does not require religious exemptions to neutral and generally applicable laws,even if those laws incidentally burden religious practice. Over the years, Smith has been criticized for its insensitivityand harm to religious needs and rights, particularly those of religious minorities. Frank S. Ravitch (Michigan State University College of Law) explains why he no longer supports the overturning of Smith.
Women and Church Governance: What Pope Francis’s Reform Changed—and What It Left Open
by Francisca Pérez-Madrid
Pope Francis once described clericalism as “one of the greatest deformations” in the life of the Catholic Church. It is a strong diagnosis. What is striking, then, is how resistant that clericalism has proven to reform—even after Praedicate Evangelium, the most ambitious overhaul of the Roman Curia in decades.
That apostolic constitution, promulgated in March 2022 after nine years of preparation, contains a genuinely historic statement: for the first time in the history of the Catholic Church, any member of the faithful—including a laywoman—can in principle lead a dicastery of the Roman Curia. And Pope Francis did not merely open that door on paper. In January 2025, Sister Simona Brambilla became the first woman ever named prefect of a Vatican dicastery, and Sister Raffaella Petrini was appointed governor of Vatican City State. Under Pope Leo XIV, the momentum has continued: Sister Tiziana Merletti was named secretary of the same dicastery in May 2025, resulting in three of its top five positions held by women religious.
On 17 March 2026, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) issued a judgment regarding Catholic institutions in Germany and their employment relationships, in Katholische Schwangerschaftsberatung v. JB. The ruling established that a Catholic employer, in this case a pregnancy counseling office at Caritas, cannot terminate a contract of employment solely on the basis of the employee’s leaving the Catholic Church. The Court determined that such a dismissal constitutes unequal treatment, unless the employee’s church membership is a genuine, legitimate, and necessary requirement for the specific occupation. While acknowledging the right of churches to self-determination in employment matters, the CJEU determined the dismissal to be unlawful, as the employer did not generally require staff to be Catholic and had employed non-Catholics in similar roles.
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