Law Commons^™

The "Nonministerial" Exception, Athanasius G. Sirilla

Notre Dame Law Review

In 2014, Charlotte Catholic High School declined to continue Lonnie Billard’s employment as a substitute drama teacher after he publicly announced, via Facebook, that he and his same-sex partner were getting civilly married. Billard sued the school in the Western District of North Carolina for unlawful employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act due to his sexual orientation. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Billard. The court first held that the high school’s actions could constitute unlawful sex discrimination in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County. The district court …

Christians And/As Liberals?, Steven D. Smith

Notre Dame Law Review

Christianity and liberalism were made to fit each other, like hand and glove. According to some interpretations, anyway. Liberal constitutionalism, with its commitments to freedom and equal human dignity, is the political system that reflects and embodies Christian commitments; and the constitutional legal order that accompanies liberalism, centrally including legally enforced rights of religious freedom, is the mode of government that best permits Christians to live in accordance with their faith in a fallen and deviant world. Thus, a couple of decades ago, Robert Kraynak reported that “[a]lmost all churches and theologians now believe that the form of government most …

Catholic Liberalism And The Liberal Tradition, Kathleen A. Brady

Notre Dame Law Review

Criticisms of liberalism are nothing new. All political traditions have their detractors, and as in the past, today’s critics of liberalism include those on the left and right as well as religious believers and those without religious affiliations. However, in very recent years, far-reaching and deepening critiques have been emerging from an unlikely source. Throughout American history, the nation’s religious communities have been among the strongest defenders of religious freedom as well as other fundamental liberal values such as limited government, democratic institutions, civic equality, and other civil freedoms. Conservative Christians have been no exception. With other Americans, they have …

Natural Law, Parental Rights, And The Defense Of "Liberal" Limits On Government: An Analysis Of The Mortara Case And Its Contemporary Parallels, Melissa Moschella

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article explores parallels between integralists’ defense of the Mortara case (in which Pius IX removed a child from his parents’ care in order to provide him with a Catholic education) and contemporary progressive arguments for overriding the authority of parents who do not want their gender-dysphoric children to undergo social or medical gender transition. In Part I, I offer an overview of the natural law case for limited government, then in Part II I turn more specifically to a natural law defense of parental rights as an essential aspect of limited government. In the following Part, I return to …

"The Arc Of The Moral Universe": Christian Eschatology And U.S. Constitutionalism, Nathan S. Chapman

Notre Dame Law Review

This Essay first attempts to understand how a contested Christian doctrine found its way into constitutional law. It does so through a reverse genealogy of ideas—an archaeology, perhaps. The Essay begins by sketching how U.S. constitutionalism, in both theory and doctrine, reflects the belief that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It then suggests that underlying this constitutional theme is a merger of two features of American civil religion: the tradition of treating the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as the central texts of a sacred canon and the belief that America …

"It Is Tash Whom He Serves": Deneen And Vermeule On Liberalism, Andrew Koppelman

Notre Dame Law Review

I worry that some recent Christian criticisms of liberalism are the kind of fantasy that Murdoch warned about, caricaturing what they purport to oppose. They are also ominously vague about what would replace it. Both writers echo earlier Christian flirtations with Marxism: philosophical errors lead idealists to gullibly embrace authoritarian kleptocrats who do not give a damn about the people the idealists are trying to help.

I will focus on the work of Patrick Deneen, with some reference to the more abbreviated but similar critiques of liberalism by Adrian Vermeule. Both claim that liberalism’s relentless logic tends to destroy communities …

The Primacy Of Free Exercise In Public-Employee Religious Speech, Nicholas J. Grandpre

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note addresses the question left open by the Court and highlighted by Justice Thomas: under what standard of review should courts review public-employee religious expression protected by both the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses? This Note begins by introducing the doctrine of government-employee speech. Then, this Note surveys proposals within existing scholarship that address how courts ought to treat public-employee religious expression. In doing so, this Note evaluates the following proposals: (1) applying Pickering balancing as is; (2) applying a modified version of Pickering balancing; (3) replacing Pickering balancing with intermediate scrutiny; (4) the Holmesian approach: deeming public-employee …

The Limits Of Church Autonomy, Lael Weinberger

Notre Dame Law Review

American courts apply “church autonomy doctrine” to protect the self-governance of religious institutions, based on both of the First Amendment’s religion clauses. Church autonomy’s defenders have sometimes described the doctrine as establishing distinct spheres of sovereignty for church and state. But critics have argued that church autonomy puts religious institutions above the law. They contend that church autonomy doctrine lacks limiting principles and worry that the “sphere sovereignty” theory of church and state leaves no room for accountability for wrongdoing in religious institutions. The courts, for their part, have recognized that church autonomy must have limits but have struggled to …