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Religion's Footnote Four: Church Autonomy As Arbitration, Michael A. Helfand
Religion's Footnote Four: Church Autonomy As Arbitration, Michael A. Helfand
Michael A Helfand
While the Supreme Court’s decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC has been hailed as an unequivocal victory for religious liberty, the Court’s holding in footnote four – that the ministerial exception is an affirmative defense and not a jurisdictional bar – undermines decades of conventional thinking about the relationship between church and state. For some time, a wide range of scholars had conceptualized the relationship between religious institutions and civil courts as “jurisdictional” – that is, scholars converged on the view that the religion clauses deprived courts of subject-matter jurisdiction over religious claims. In turn, courts could not adjudicate religious disputes …
Fighting For The Debtor's Soul: Regulating Religious Commercial Conduct, Michael A. Helfand
Fighting For The Debtor's Soul: Regulating Religious Commercial Conduct, Michael A. Helfand
Michael A Helfand
Although courts often think of religion in terms of faith, prayer, and conscience, many religious groups are increasingly looking to religion as a source of law, commerce, and contract. As a result, courts are being called upon to regulate conduct that is simultaneously religious and commercial. In addressing such cases, some courts minimize the religious features of the case and simply focus on its secular elements while others over-exaggerate the religious features of the case and thereby refuse to adjudicate the dispute on Establishment Clause grounds. As an example of this dynamic, I explore the constitutionality of imposing sanctions for …