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Jews And The Culture Wars: Consensus And Dissensus In Jewish Religious Liberty Advocacy, Michael A. Helfand
Jews And The Culture Wars: Consensus And Dissensus In Jewish Religious Liberty Advocacy, Michael A. Helfand
Michael A Helfand
In the recent culture wars, traditionalists and progressives have clashed over dueling conceptions of family, sexuality and religion—manifested in debates over abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage. Caught in this conflict has been a political and cultural reassessment of religious liberty; a doctrine originally seen as necessary to protect faith commitments from majoritarian persecution, the public salience of religious liberty has waned as it has clashed with the rights of women and LGBT people. And these evolving commitments to dueling rights have triggered religious, political and ideological realignments, generating new alliances across political and faith communities.
In this new environment, both …
When Judges Are Theologians: Adjudicating Religious Questions, Michael A. Helfand
When Judges Are Theologians: Adjudicating Religious Questions, Michael A. Helfand
Michael A Helfand
In this chapter, I explore how judges—and, more generally, U.S. courts—deal with legal disputes when they must consider not only laws and facts, but also religion, or maybe even more precisely, theology. Indeed, in a wide range of circumstances, judges are confronted with cases where the outcome in some way or another requires them to issue a decision that is predicated, to varying to degrees, on a theological question upon which there is some debate. While in American law the ostensibly simple answer to this question is simply that the Constitution prohibits courts from adjudicating religious questions, the reality is …