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Between Law And Religion: Procedural Challenges To Religious Arbitration Awards, Michael Helfand
Between Law And Religion: Procedural Challenges To Religious Arbitration Awards, Michael Helfand
Michael A Helfand
This Essay presented at the Sharia and Halakha in America Conference explores the unique status of religious law as a hybrid concept that simultaneously retains the characteristics of both law and religion. To do so, the Article considers as a case study how courts should evaluate procedural challenges to religious arbitration awards. To respond to such challenges, courts must treat religious law as law when defining the contractually adopted religious procedural rules and treat religious law as religion when reviewing precisely what the religious procedural rules require. On this account, constitutional and arbitration doctrine combine to insulate religious arbitration awards …
Corporate Piety And Impropriety: Hobby Lobby's Extension Of Rfra Rights To For-Profit Corporations, Amy Sepinwall
Corporate Piety And Impropriety: Hobby Lobby's Extension Of Rfra Rights To For-Profit Corporations, Amy Sepinwall
Amy J. Sepinwall
In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court held, for the first time, that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applied to for-profit corporations and, on that basis, it allowed Hobby Lobby to omit otherwise mandated contraceptive coverage from its employee healthcare package. Critics argue that the Court’s novel expansion of corporate rights is fundamentally inconsistent with the basic principles of corporate law. In particular, they contend that the decision ignores the fact that the corporation, as an artificial entity, cannot exercise religion in its own right, and they decry the notion that the law might look through the corporate …
Conscience And Complicity: Assessing Pleas For Religious Exemptions After Hobby Lobby, Amy Sepinwall
Conscience And Complicity: Assessing Pleas For Religious Exemptions After Hobby Lobby, Amy Sepinwall
Amy J. Sepinwall
In the paradigmatic case of conscientious objection, the objector claims that his religion forbids him from actively participating in a wrong (e.g., by fighting in a war). In the religious challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, on the other hand, employers claim that their religious convictions forbid them from merely subsidizing insurance through which their employees might commit a wrong (e.g., by using contraception). The understanding of complicity underpinning these challenges is vastly more expansive than what standard legal doctrine or moral theory contemplates. Courts routinely reject claims of conscientious objection to taxes that fund military initiatives, or …
Religious Exemptions, Marriage Equality, And The Establishment Of Religion, Nancy J. Knauer
Religious Exemptions, Marriage Equality, And The Establishment Of Religion, Nancy J. Knauer
Nancy J. Knauer
The advent of nationwide marriage equality has sparked a robust debate over the extent of religious liberties and the limits of civil rights protections. As public opinion regarding LGBT individuals and the families they form has evolved, religious beliefs that once served as the basis for law and policy have been increasing marginalized. Various efforts have been made to protect religious objectors who continue to believe that marriage is only between one man and one woman. For example, all of the states that had enacted marriage equality legislation included exceptions for clergy and religious organizations to ensure that they would …
Religious Institutionalism, Implied Consent And The Value Of Voluntarism, Michael A. Helfand
Religious Institutionalism, Implied Consent And The Value Of Voluntarism, Michael A. Helfand
Michael A Helfand
Increasingly, clashes between the demands of law and aspirations of religion center on the legal status and treatment of religious institutions. Much of the rising tensions revolving around religious institutions—exemplified by recent Supreme Court decisions such as Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby—stem from conflicts between the religious objectives of those institutions and their impact on third parties who do not necessarily share those same objectives. This Article aims to provide a framework for analyzing the claims of religious institutions by grounding those claims in the principle of voluntarism. On such an account, religious institutions deserve protection because …
Hobby Lobby's Challenge To Officialdom's 'Compelling Interest', Michael Helfand
Hobby Lobby's Challenge To Officialdom's 'Compelling Interest', Michael Helfand
Michael A Helfand
No abstract provided.
The Murkiness Of The Hobby Lobby Ruling, Michael Helfand
The Murkiness Of The Hobby Lobby Ruling, Michael Helfand
Michael A Helfand
No abstract provided.
America Doesn't See Its Religious Minorities, Michael Helfand
America Doesn't See Its Religious Minorities, Michael Helfand
Michael A Helfand
No abstract provided.
Panelist, “The Current Clash”, Michael Helfand
Panelist, “The Current Clash”, Michael Helfand
Michael A Helfand
No abstract provided.
Implied Consent: A Proposal On For-Profit Conscience, Michael Helfand
Implied Consent: A Proposal On For-Profit Conscience, Michael Helfand
Michael A Helfand
No abstract provided.
Testimony Before The U.S. Commission On Civil Rights, Briefing On Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Non-Discrimination Principles With Civil Liberties, Michael A. Helfand
Testimony Before The U.S. Commission On Civil Rights, Briefing On Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Non-Discrimination Principles With Civil Liberties, Michael A. Helfand
Michael A Helfand
No abstract provided.
Policing Terrorists In The Community, Sahar F. Aziz
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 …
What Is A "Church"?: Implied Consent And The Contraception Mandate, Michael Helfand
What Is A "Church"?: Implied Consent And The Contraception Mandate, Michael Helfand
Michael A Helfand
This Article considers the “religious employer” exception to the “contraception mandate” – that is, the “preventative care” requirements announced by Department of Health and Human Services pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This exception has triggered significant litigation with a variety of employers claiming that they have been excluding from the “religious employer” classification in violation of both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In considering these claims, this Article applies an “implied consent” framework to these cases, which grounds the authority of religious institutions in the presumed consent of their members. On such …
Religious Arbitration And The New Multiculturalism: Negotiating Conflicting Legal Orders, Michael A. Helfand
Religious Arbitration And The New Multiculturalism: Negotiating Conflicting Legal Orders, Michael A. Helfand
Michael A Helfand
This Article considers a trend towards what I have termed the "new multiculturalism," where conflicts between law and religion are less about recognition and symbolism and more about conflicting legal orders. Nothing typifies this trend more than the increased visibility of religious arbitration, whereby religious groups use current arbitration doctrine to have their disputes adjudicated not in U.S. courts and under U.S. law, but before religious courts and under religious law. This dynamic has pushed the following question to the forefront of the multicultural agenda: under what circumstances should U.S. courts enforce arbitration awards issued by religious courts in accordance …
How The Diversity Rationale Lays The Groundwork For New Discrimination: Examining The Trajectory Of Equal Protection Doctrine, Michael Helfand
How The Diversity Rationale Lays The Groundwork For New Discrimination: Examining The Trajectory Of Equal Protection Doctrine, Michael Helfand
Michael A Helfand
This Article advocates differentiating between two distinct categories of equal protection cases. The first-what I have termed indicator cases-are instances where courts consider whether there are sufficient factual indications to demonstrate the existence of aprimafacie equal protection violation. The second-violation casesare instances where courts consider, having already determined the existence of an equal protection violation, whether there is a good enough justification for a prima facie equal protection violation. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has not differentiated between these two different types of cases. This has led to a string of decisions where the Supreme Court has erroneously looked for justifications …