Rampant mental illness in jails and prisons combines two forms of suffering for offenders: the illness itself and having to endure it behind bars. The sheer magnitude of the problem is shocking. Jails and prisons hold three times as many mentally ill people as mental health hospitals. This is partly

The publication of the first annual report on the implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People was a first step in the long and demanding journey necessary to restore confidence in the bishops’ moral authority, after the searing revelations of the way in which

The founding fathers took international law very seriously. In the U.S. Constitution, treaties, along with federal laws, are declared to be “the supreme Law of the Land.” In addition, the Judiciary Act of 1789 provided that foreigners could bring suit in U.S. district courts for torts co

George Santayana (1863-1952) lived in Boston for 40 years and taught philosophy at Harvard for 23 of those years. He had, however, been born in Spain, never gave up his Spanish citizenship and spent the last four decades of his life in Oxford and Rome. No surprise, therefore, that his comments on th

As we retell the Bethlehem story each year, its familiarity can obscure one of its most important lessons. We do not celebrate at Christmas some timeless truth or immutable dogma but a particular moment. “A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was

Presidential election campaigns in the United States have become trials for the long-distance runner, increasingly extended and increasingly expensive. For some months now, the nine declared candidates for the Democratic Party presidential nomination have been appearing at various panels around the