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Articles 1 - 30 of 35
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
Privilege Through Prayer: Examining Bible-Based Prison Rehabilitation Programs Under The Establishment Clause, Nathaniel J. Odle
Privilege Through Prayer: Examining Bible-Based Prison Rehabilitation Programs Under The Establishment Clause, Nathaniel J. Odle
ExpressO
In early June of 2006, an Iowa federal judge found a publicly-funded prison ministry to be in violation of the Establishment Clause and ordered it stopped. The program in question, the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, conceived and maintained by Prison Fellowship Ministries, utilized an overtly Christian model to rehabilitate inmates through spiritual and moral regeneration. In the eyes of the court, the failure of the state of Iowa to provide a reasonable secular alternative had the primary effect of advancing religion and fostered excessive governmental entanglement under a traditional Lemon analysis. Equally important in the court’s decision was the lack of …
A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp
A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp
ExpressO
The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.
Uncivil Religion: "Judeo-Christianity" And The Ten Commandments, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Roger Hendrix
Uncivil Religion: "Judeo-Christianity" And The Ten Commandments, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Roger Hendrix
ExpressO
In the recent Decalogue Cases, Justice Scalia argued that when it comes to “public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our Nation's historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits th[e] disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.” Justice Scalia's argument represents the latest attempt to insulate American civil religion from Establishment Clause attack. A “civil religion” is a set of nondenominational values, symbols, rituals, and assumptions which create both reverence of national history and formation of a communal national bond. The most recent incarnation of American civil …
Why Guru Nanak Is Another Nail In The Coffin Of West Coast Hotel V. Parrish, John H. Ryskamp
Why Guru Nanak Is Another Nail In The Coffin Of West Coast Hotel V. Parrish, John H. Ryskamp
ExpressO
In Guru Nanak v. Sutter, the Ninth Circuit upheld RLUIPA by accepting its conflation of "individualized assessments" and "substantial burden." Although RLUIPA involved a misreading of Oregon v. Smith, it was a misreading the Ninth Circuit adopted. The question is, why did Sutter counsel allow the misreading of Smith, especially since Smith lost? It is because, in general, the American bar has failed to see that there has been a substantial corrosion of the scrutiny regime established by West Coast Hotel v. Parrish. They are in denial: they can't believe that the scrutiny regime could ever fall. And yet, the …
Varied Carols: Legislative Prayer In A Pluralist Polity, Robert J. Delahunty
Varied Carols: Legislative Prayer In A Pluralist Polity, Robert J. Delahunty
ExpressO
The article grows out of my research in writing an amicus brief for a group of distinguished theologians and religious scholars in Hinrichs v. Bosma, a case currently pending before the Seventh Circuit. That litigation involves a challenge to the practice of the Indiana House of Representatives of inviting chaplains of various faiths to lead the House in prayer before the start of each day’s official business. The trial court interpreted the Supreme Court’s 1983 decision, Marsh v. Chambers, to prohibit “sectarian” legislative prayer, and accordingly enjoined the Indiana House’s chaplains from invoking the name of Jesus, or otherwise praying …
Liberalism And Religion, Steven H. Shiffrin
For A New Order In The Court, Bruce Ledewitz
For A New Order In The Court, Bruce Ledewitz
Ledewitz Papers
Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals
A Race Or A Nation? Cherokee National Identity And The Status Of Freedmen's Descendents, S. Alan Ray
A Race Or A Nation? Cherokee National Identity And The Status Of Freedmen's Descendents, S. Alan Ray
ExpressO
The Cherokee Nation today faces the challenge of determining its citizenship criteria in the context of race. The article focuses on the Cherokee Freedmen. As former slaves of Cherokee citizens, the Freedmen were adopted into the Cherokee Nation after the Civil War pursuant to a treaty with the United States, and given unqualified rights of citizenship. The incorporation of the Freedmen into the tribe was resisted from the start, and now, faced with a decision of the Cherokee Nation’s highest court affirming the descendents’ citizenship rights, the Nation prepares to vote on a constitutional amendment which would impose an Indian …
Why Don’T More Public Schools Teach Sex Education? A Constitutional Explanation And Critique, Jesse R. Merriam
Why Don’T More Public Schools Teach Sex Education? A Constitutional Explanation And Critique, Jesse R. Merriam
ExpressO
This Article questions why so many public schools do not teach any form of sex education. The answer proposed in this Article is that the U.S. Constitution is a part of the problem. This claim is based on the following two premises: (1) the U.S. Constitution certainly does not require public schools to teach sex education; and (2) the U.S. Constitution arguably requires public schools that teach sex education to exempt those students whose religious beliefs are substantially burdened by sex education.
To illustrate how these two premises might weigh in a school district’s decision not to teach sex education, …
Our Sovereign Body: Narrating The Fiction Of Sovereign Immunity In The Supreme Court: Part I-A English Stories, Marc L. Roark
Our Sovereign Body: Narrating The Fiction Of Sovereign Immunity In The Supreme Court: Part I-A English Stories, Marc L. Roark
ExpressO
This is part I-A of a Book I am working towards on the narratives and fictions of sovereign immunity. The goal in this part is to look before the American republic and towards the background in which American Sovereignty came to be shaped by -- the feudal notion of the sovereign; the Lockean response, and the Blackstonean doctrine. The first part looks at the legal fictions surrounding the kingship, their sources and their effects. The Second part looks to the specific ways of treating the sovereign in law, namely viewing King as Property owner or patriarch, Trustee, and Constitution.
Our Sovereign Body: Narrating The Fiction Of Sovereign Immunity In The Supreme Court, Marc L. Roark
Our Sovereign Body: Narrating The Fiction Of Sovereign Immunity In The Supreme Court, Marc L. Roark
ExpressO
This is the introduction to a book I am preparing on the Normative and Narrative aspects of the U.S. Sovereign Immunity Doctrine. The introduction sets up the problem of a doctrine that is not exactly coherent with the national narrative.
Social Reproduction And Religious Reproduction: A Democratic-Communitarian Analysis Of The Yoder Problem, Josh Chafetz
Social Reproduction And Religious Reproduction: A Democratic-Communitarian Analysis Of The Yoder Problem, Josh Chafetz
ExpressO
In 1972, Wisconsin v. Yoder presented the Supreme Court with a sharp clash between the state's interest in social reproduction through education -- that is, society's interest in using the educational system to perpetuate its collective way of life among the next generation -- and the parents' interest in religious reproduction -- that is, their interest in passing their religious beliefs on to their children. This Article will take up the challenge of that clash, a clash which continues to be central to current debates over issues like intelligent design in the classroom. This Article engages with the competing theories …
Why Religion In Politics Does Not Violate La Conception Américaine De La Laïcité, Michael J. Perry
Why Religion In Politics Does Not Violate La Conception Américaine De La Laïcité, Michael J. Perry
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
La conception Am6ricaine de la Laĭcité consists principally of a constitutional norm-the nonestablishment norm-and of the laW that the U.S. Supreme Court has developed in the course of enforcing the norm. The nonestablishment norm forbids government-both the national government and state government-to "establish" religion. American laYcit6 also consists of what we may call "the morality of liberal democracy. " My aim in this essay is to explain why religion in politics does not violate American laYcit6; more specifically, my aim is to explain why political reliance on religiously grounded morality violates neither the nonestablishment norm nor the morality of liberal …
Religious Group Autonomy: Further Reflections About What Is At Stake, Kathleen A. Brady
Religious Group Autonomy: Further Reflections About What Is At Stake, Kathleen A. Brady
Working Paper Series
This article addresses the protections afforded by the First Amendment when government regulation interferes with the internal activities or affairs of religious groups. In previous pieces, I have argued that the First Amendment should be construed to provide religious groups a broad right of autonomy over all aspects of internal group operations, those that are clearly religious in nature as well as activities that seem essentially secular. In my view, such autonomy is necessary to preserve the ability of religious groups to generate, live out and communicate their own visions for social life, including ideas that can push the norms …
Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp
Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp
ExpressO
This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.
The California Missions Preservation Act: Safeguarding Our History Or Subsidizing Religion?, Stacey L. Mahaney
The California Missions Preservation Act: Safeguarding Our History Or Subsidizing Religion?, Stacey L. Mahaney
American University Law Review
No abstract provided.
Review Essay: Radicals In Robes , Dru Stevenson
Review Essay: Radicals In Robes , Dru Stevenson
ExpressO
This essay reviews and critiques Cass Sunstein’s new book entitled Radicals in Robes. After a discussion of Sunstein’s (somewhat misleading) rhetorical nomenclature, this essay argues that Sunstein’s proposed “minimalist” methodology in constitutional jurisprudence is beneficial, but not for the reasons Sunstein suggests. Sunstein alternatively justifies judicial restraint or incrementalism on epistemological self-doubt (cautiousness being an outgrowth of uncertainty) and his fear that accomplishments by Progressives in the last century will be undone by conservative judges in the present. Constitutional incrementalism is more convincingly justified on classical economic grounds. While affirming Sunstein’s overall thesis, this essay offers an alternative rationale for …
Traditional Values, Or A New Tradition Of Prejudice? The Boy Scouts Of America Vs. The Unitarian Universalist Association Of Congregations, Eric Alan Isaacson
Traditional Values, Or A New Tradition Of Prejudice? The Boy Scouts Of America Vs. The Unitarian Universalist Association Of Congregations, Eric Alan Isaacson
ExpressO
President William Howard Taft, a Unitarian leader whose liberal faith had been viciously attacked by religious conservatives in the 1908 presidential campaign, used the White House as a platform in 1911 to launch a new nonsectarian organization for youth: The Boy Scouts of America (“BSA”). Lately, however, the BSA itself has come under the control of religious conservatives – who in 1992 banned Taft’s denomination from the BSA’s Religious Relationships Committee, and in 1998 threw Taft’s denomination out of its Religious Emblems Program. The denomination’s offense: A tradition of teaching its children that institutionalized discrimination is wrong. Unitarian Universalist religious …
Evolution Toward Neutrality: Evolution Disclaimers, Establishment Jurisprudence Confusions, And A Proposal Of Untainted Fruits Of A Poisonous Tree, Asma T. Uddin
ExpressO
This Article deals with the controversy surrounding the teaching of evolutionary theory in American public schools, with a specific focus on disclaimers read by teachers before they teach evolution. With the rise of religious fundamentalism and the correspondent change in the American socio-legal climate, questions of religion and interpretation of the Religion Clauses of the U.S. Constitution have become increasingly pertinent. In particular, the precise relationship between the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses is of special importance with religious groups now more vocal in their articulation of their free exercise rights.
The current form of disclaimer either mentions specific religious …
Keep These Branches Untangled, Bruce Ledewitz
Keep These Branches Untangled, Bruce Ledewitz
Ledewitz Papers
Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals
Here Is The Church, Now Who Owns The Steeple? A Revised Approach To Church Property Disputes, Adam E. Lyons
Here Is The Church, Now Who Owns The Steeple? A Revised Approach To Church Property Disputes, Adam E. Lyons
ExpressO
This article reviews two approaches to the implementation of neutral principles of law – the constitutionally permissible method of resolving property disputes between bodies in a religious hierarchy. Though both approaches may be valid, the formal title approach, as implemented by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Presbytery of Beaver-Butler v. Middlesex Presbyterian Church, leads to problems in application that have been rectified by that court’s more recent decision in In re St. James the Less. It is the contention of this article that future courts and practitioners facing church property disputes can draw guidance from the St. James decision when …
The Children Of Science: Property, People, Or Something In Between?, Star Q. Lopez
The Children Of Science: Property, People, Or Something In Between?, Star Q. Lopez
ExpressO
How should states classify embryos? The war has often waged between two classifications, people versus property. But what if a state assumed something in between, finding the embryo to be a potential person entitled to special respect? If a state adopted this position, how would the law affect medical research?
Presuming embryos constitute potential persons, the debate would continue with how to define “special respect.” The status of a potential person runs along a spectrum between property and personhood. How one defines “special respect” determines where the potential person falls along this spectrum. Special respect would create a spectrum of …
Living By The Sword: The Free Exercise Of Religion And The Sikh Struggle For The Right To Carry A Kirpan, Rishi S. Bagga
Living By The Sword: The Free Exercise Of Religion And The Sikh Struggle For The Right To Carry A Kirpan, Rishi S. Bagga
ExpressO
Sikhism is a 500 year old religion with a growing presence in the United States. However, one of the articles of faith required for Sikhs, a kirpan (a ceremonial sword), conflicts with the norms of American life for these often misunderstood people. This paper gives a brief primer on Sikhism and discusses some of the day-to-day problems and recent issues facing kirpan-carrying Sikhs in North America. Upon reviewing the current state of free exercise jurisprudence as applied to the kirpan, I outline several suggestions for the acceptance and accommodation of kirpans.
Recoiling From Religion, Marc O. Degirolami
Recoiling From Religion, Marc O. Degirolami
Faculty Publications
This is an essay reviewing Professor Marci A. Hamilton's book, GOD VS. THE GAVEL: RELIGION AND THE RULE OF LAW (Cambridge Univ. Press 2005).
Professor Marci Hamilton has written a forceful and obviously heartfelt book that should give pause to committed champions of religious free exercise. She argues convincingly that religious freedom is too often invoked to shield opprobrious and socially harmful activity, and she describes numerous examples of such abuses that make any civilized person's blood run cold. Her avowed aims are to debunk the “hazardous myth” that religion is “inherently and always good for society” and to increase …
Protecting Posterity: Economics, Abortion, Politics, And The Law, Bruce Ledewitz
Protecting Posterity: Economics, Abortion, Politics, And The Law, Bruce Ledewitz
Ledewitz Papers
Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals
On Boy Scouts And Anti-Discrimination Law: The Associational Rights Of Quasi-Religious Organizations, Erez Reuveni
On Boy Scouts And Anti-Discrimination Law: The Associational Rights Of Quasi-Religious Organizations, Erez Reuveni
Erez Reuveni
This paper proposes a tripartite legal approach to analyzing the rights of private, expressive associations. Current law views private associations through a binary lens - either an organization is "religious," or it is "secular." But this dichotomy fails to account for organizations whose animating expressive purpose is both religious and secular. Using the Boy Scouts of America as a case study, this paper develops a third category of private associations, quasi-religious groups, and articulates why the category is necessary and how quasi-religious groups would fit within existing First Amendment jurisprudence. First, the article reviews numerous cases involving the Boy Scouts …
The Catholic Second Amendment, David B. Kopel
The Catholic Second Amendment, David B. Kopel
David B Kopel
At the beginning of the second millennium, there was no separation of church and state, and kings ruled the church. Tyrannicide was considered sinful. By the end of the thirteenth century, however, everything had changed. The Little Renaissance that began in the eleventh century led to a revolution in political and moral philosophy, so that using force to overthrow a tyrannical government became a positive moral duty. The intellectual revolution was an essential step in the evolution of Western political philosophy that eventually led to the American Revolution.
An Other Christian Perspective On Lawrence V. Texas, Victor C. Romero
An Other Christian Perspective On Lawrence V. Texas, Victor C. Romero
Journal Articles
The so-called Religious Right's reaction to Lawrence v. Texas has been both powerful and negative, characterizing the case as an assault on the traditional conception of marriage and family life. This essay is an attempt to present a different Christian view. Modeled on the life and teachings of Jesus, this perspective celebrates the Lawrence case as consistent with God's call to social justice for the oppressed. It also outlines a Christian sexual ethic that lifts up genuine, monogamous, committed love between two individuals, whether of the same or opposite sex.
Act Up/Anita Bryant/Drugs, Religion, And Law/Lambda Legal Defense And Education Fund/Right To Reply And Right Of The Press/Sincerity Of Religious Belief, James M. Donovan
Act Up/Anita Bryant/Drugs, Religion, And Law/Lambda Legal Defense And Education Fund/Right To Reply And Right Of The Press/Sincerity Of Religious Belief, James M. Donovan
James M. Donovan
Six entries in the Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties (Paul Finkelman, ed.).
Headscarves In German Public Schools: Religious Minorities Are Welcome In Germany, Unless — God Forbid — They Are Religious, Ruben Seth Fogel
Headscarves In German Public Schools: Religious Minorities Are Welcome In Germany, Unless — God Forbid — They Are Religious, Ruben Seth Fogel
NYLS Law Review
No abstract provided.