Law Commons^™

An Opinion For The Ages, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Stretching Religious Liberty, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Israel's Constitutional Tragedy, Menachem Lorberbaum

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dual Sovereignty In Traditional Judaism And Liberal Democracy, William Galston

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Overcoming Obstacles To Religious Exercise In K-12 Education, Lewis M. Wasserman

Lewis M. Wasserman

Overcoming Obstacles to Religious Exercise in K-12 Education Lewis M. Wasserman Abstract Judicial decisions rendered during the last half-century have overwhelmingly favored educational agencies over claims by parents for religious accommodations to public education requirements, no matter what constitutional or statutory rights were pressed at the tribunal, or when the conflict arose. These claim failures are especially striking in the wake of the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (“RFRAs”) passed by Congress in 1993 and, to date, by eighteen state legislatures thereafter, since the RFRAs were intended to (1) insulate religious adherents from injuries inflicted by the United States Supreme Court’s …

Valuing Our Discordant Constitutional Discourse: Autonomous-Text Constitutionalism And The Jewish Legal Tradition, Shlomo C. Pill

Shlomo C. Pill

This paper considers the viability of autonomous-text constitutionalism, a constitutional interpretive and adjudicative theory based on Hans Georg-Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. As the paper explains, this theory is premised on the subjectivity of all interpretive activity; it admits the legitimacy of a wide spectrum of reasonable interpretations of the Constitution, each given their unique character by the dialectical merging of experiential horizons between the fixed text and individual interpreter. This theory embraces a plurality of constitutional meanings in theory, limited by the need for unity in national spheres of constitutional practice. Such practical certainty is achieved by our empowering judicial institutions …

Pennsylvania’S Supreme Court, Still Broken, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Tactics, Strategies & Battles—Oh My!: Perseverance Of The Perpetual Problem Regarding Preaching To Public School Pupils & Why It Persists, Casey S. Mckay

Casey Scott McKay

After reviewing the history of the religious war on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, my article, “Tactics, Strategies & Battles—Oh My!: Perseverance of the Perpetual Problem Regarding Preaching to Public School Pupils & Why it Persists,“ examines why such a seemingly well-settled issue survives and, to some extent, succeeds.

First, by exploiting common misconceptions among the American public, lawmakers are able to take advantage of ignorance driven by strong emotions. Next, religious special interests groups, with seemingly unlimited funds, thrust propaganda supported by worldwide media reinforcement on an already vulnerable American public. Thus, irresponsible state legislators, caught between a rock and …

Rules, Rights And Religion: The Abyssinian Baptist Church And The Quest For Community, 1808-1810, Quinton H. Dixie

Quinton H Dixie

Religion, as with law, is partially about bringing together opposing narrative interpretations in order to better understand what believers feel is real. This morning I will show how narratives and their various interpretations display how communities bound by laws and morality express their understanding of who they are called to be.

Ideological Voting Applied To The School Desegregation Cases In The Federal Courts Of Appeals From The 1960’S And 70’S, Joe Custer

Joe Custer

This paper considers a research suggestion from Cass Sunstein to analyze segregation cases from the 1960's and 1970's and whether three hypothesis he projected in the article "Ideological Voting on Federal Courts of Appeals: A Preliminary Investigation," 90 Va. L. Rev. 301 (2004), involving various models of judicial ideology, would pertain. My paper considers Sunstein’s three hypotheses in addition to other judicial ideologies to try to empirically determine what was influencing Federal Court of Appeals Judges in regard to Civil Rights issues, specifically school desegregation, in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Policing Terrorists In The Community, Sahar F. Aziz

Sahar F. Aziz

Twelve years after the September 11th attacks, countering domestic terrorism remains a top priority for federal law enforcement agencies. Using a variety of reactive and preventive tactics, law enforcement seeks to prevent terrorism before it occurs. Towards that end, community policing developed in the 1990s to combat violent crime in inner city communities is being adopted in counterterrorism as a means of collaborating with Muslim communities and local police to combat “Islamist” homegrown terrorism. Developed in response to paramilitary policing models, community policing is built upon the notion that effective policing requires mutual trust and relationships among law enforcement and …

Render Unto Rawls: Law, Gospel, And The Evangelical Fallacy, Wayne Barnes

Wayne Barnes

There are many voices in American politics claiming that various candidates, laws and policies are necessitated by a “Christian” worldview. Many of these voices use explicit public rhetoric that their position is the one compelled by “Christian” principles. Although religious voices have been present in the United States since its founding, the volume and urgency of the voices seems to have increased dramatically in the last several decades, during the so-called “culture wars.” These voices famously come from the Christian Religious Right, advocating socially conservative laws on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. But there are also voices from …

Render Unto Rawls: Law, Gospel, And The Evangelical Fallacy, Wayne R. Barnes

Wayne R. Barnes

Book Review: "The Tragedy Of Religious Freedom", Ian C. Bartrum

Scholarly Works

Ian Bartrum reviews Marc DeGirolami's The Tragedy of Religious Freedom (Harvard University Press 2013).