“My name is Dan Tokaji. I’m the Dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School, and I’m delighted to welcome you to the first Thomas Fairchild Lecture of my deanship and our first virtual Fairchild Lecture… We have an extraordinary speaker for this evening, David Maraniss… David is an acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and best-selling author who has in his various books chronicled American life through the lens of sports figures, U.S. Presidents, and everyday heroes. He’s an associate editor at The Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt. He’s won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and was a finalist three other times.”

As a matter of first impression in the federal appellate courts, a three-judge Seventh Circuit panel broadly interpreted the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Act (“USERRA”), to require private employers under some circumstances to provide paid leave to employees absent from work due to military service. White held that an employer’s failure to provide paid military leave, while on the other hand offering paid leave for other comparable leaves of absence, impermissibly violates USERRA’s equal-treatment rule for reservists and National Guardsmen. The net effect of this holding is clear: service members and employers must understand the Seventh Circuit’s reasoning and its future impact on employment policies and practices.

Post-Enlightenment Western religion, and legal frameworks responding to it, place special emphasis on individuality and personal conscience. But as the racial and ethnic makeup of the nation evolves, an increasing portion of the nation’s population follows religious traditions that emphasize communal practices. Thus, as demographics change, the appearance of religious exercise will change too. Recent scholarly critique, which questions robust protections for religious free exercise, should consider how certain protections may be particularly valuable for minority, but growing, religious perspectives. Specifically, protections for institutional free exercise and religious land use, with the proper limitations, should be seriously considered as desirable safeguards of minority rights. Such approaches to religious liberty law would respect the communal and embodied nature of religious life which looks to expand in years to come.