Public research infrastructure for religious-freedom compliance in the United States.
The Institute produces standardized, openly licensed instruments — consolidated jurisprudence, governance frameworks, and verified data — for courts, public agencies, employers, school systems, and researchers. Every output is identical for every reader. The core of every program is free.
Founding Commitments
Embedded in the Institute's governing documents
- Standardized and identical.
Every output is standardized and identical for every user. No edition, dataset, framework, or analysis is prepared for, adapted to, or withheld from any particular reader.
- Open at the core.
Core outputs — datasets, methodologies, model instruments, and executive findings — are published open-access under Creative Commons licensing.
- Published, uniform, non-exclusive terms.
Where an edition carries a subscription price, its rates are published, uniform, and non-exclusive. No reader receives terms another cannot.
- No commissioned work. Ever.
The Institute accepts no commissioned, client-specific, or bespoke engagements of any kind. It does not provide advisory, representation, or client services. This limitation is a rule of the Institute's organizational documents, not a policy preference.
These commitments make the Institute's benefits public by architecture — not by promise.
Compliance is mandatory. Doctrine is unsettled. The infrastructure is missing.
Between 2021 and 2023, religious-freedom compliance became simultaneously obligatory and doctrinally uncertain in the American workplace, classroom, and supply chain. The scale is a matter of public record.
No U.S. institution produces the standardized, open, continuously maintained research these mandates presuppose. Building that infrastructure is the Institute's sole purpose.
Programs of the Institute
The Comparative Jurisprudence Lab
A free platform consolidating U.S. religious-liberty law — federal and fifty-state — with sourced documentation of the practices courts and employers encounter.
Program I →Open Governance Frameworks
Model policies, implementation guides, and a replicable dialogue protocol, published under open license for direct adoption by any institution.
Program II →Religious-Freedom Risk Monitor
Standardized country and sector research on persecution-linked commercial exposure, organized by federal CPC designations, with an always-open dataset.
Program III →Inaugural publication calendar
The Institute publishes on a fixed calendar. Each title appears open-access on release. See the full calendar →
- Research Note No. 1The Post-Groff Compliance Gap: What the Public Data ShowForthcoming · 2026
An evidentiary synthesis of the federal case law, EEOC charge data, and enforcement figures defining the current religious-accommodation landscape.
- Methodology Paper No. 1Documentation Standards for Religious-Freedom ResearchForthcoming · 2026
The Institute's sourcing, verification, citation, and abstention protocols, published for scrutiny and replication.
Founder & Executive Director
Juan Mario Jiménez Arbeláez is an attorney (Colombia) and holds an LL.M. in International Legal Studies with a specialization in Human Rights from American University Washington College of Law. His work spans apex-court constitutional jurisprudence, international religious-freedom policy, and the documentation of violations of freedom of religion or belief.
- Constitutional Court of Colombia — service in the chambers of a sitting Justice
- International Religious Freedom Roundtable — Co-Chair, Latin America Working Group
- IRF Secretariat — authorized internship and published policy analysis
- Founder of two U.S. companies — formation, funding, and employment experience
Built to be used — by anyone.
Every framework, survey, and dataset on this site is published for direct adoption. No engagement, no permission, no fee for the core.
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