Law Commons^™

Government Nonedorsement, Nelson Tebbe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Israel’S Rosit The Riveter: Between Secular Law And Jewish Law, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

In the world of Judaism, the “end of men” is not in sight. Surely, tectonic plates are sliding and shifting, and a great deal of change is unfolding, but men are fighting hard to keep patriarchy alive. Deep inside, the Orthodox patriarchal man may be motivated by the sheer impulse to maintain his power, but outwardly he projects a profound commitment to his religious law, the law of God. He believes that his fight is a noble one ordained by divine will and that God is on his side. The problem is global; it appears in every Jewish community around …

Some Thoughts On The First Amendment's Religion Clauses And Abner Greene's Against Obligation, With Reference To Patton Oswalt's Character 'Paul From Staten Island' In The Film Big Fan, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

In this short contribution to a symposium held at Boston University in the fall of 2012, I review Abner Greene's recent book Against Obligation by considering whether Greene's broad theory of freedom from state obligations under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment would protect the maniacal New York Giants fan "Paul from Staten Island," portrayed by the ridiculously talented Patton Oswalt in Robert Siegel's hilarious film "Big Fan." I also explain how I use the film in my Law and Religion class to teach the Free Exercise Clause and the deeply perplexing question of how the word "religion" …

Religions As Sovereigns: Why Religion Is "Special", Elizabeth Clark

Faculty Scholarship

Commentators increasingly challenge religion’s privileged legal status, arguing that it is not “special” or distinct from other associations or philosophical or conscientious claims. I propose that religion is “special” because it functions metaphorically as a legal sovereign, asserting supreme authority over a realm of human life. Under a religion-as-sovereign theory, religious freedom can be understood as at least partial deference to a religious sovereign in a system of shared or overlapping sovereignty. This Article suggests that federalism, which also involves shared sovereignty, can provide a useful heuristic device for examining religious freedom. Specifically, the Article examines a range of federalism …

The Politics Of Religious Establishment: Recognition Of Muslim Marriages In South Africa, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

This paper explores the normative dissonances and antinomies generated by the politics around religious establishment by examining post-apartheid law reform efforts in South Africa to recognize Muslim marriages. Since the late 1990s, the South African Law Reform Commission has initiated various projects to recognize the claims of and redress past discrimination against different religious communities, including tribal groups living under customary law and religious minorities with their own family and personal status laws. It is striking how the norms and assumptions underpinning this debate differ from engagements involving the claims of religious communities in Europe and North America where broadly …

True Lies: Canossa As Myth, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is a response to Paul Horwitz, “Freedom of the Church without Romance,” published as part of a symposium on “The Freedom of the Church.” The essay endorses Horwitz’s central thesis that advocates of a contemporary “freedom of the Church” have overlooked historical complexities in marking the 11th-century investiture conflict between Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII, often simply referred to “Canossa” after the small Emilian village where Henry sought absolution from Gregory, as the birth of that freedom.

The essay goes beyond Horwitz to argue that the historical account of “Canossa” presupposed by freedom-of-the-Church advocates is literally false. …

Due Process In Islamic Criminal Law, Sadiq Reza

Faculty Scholarship

Rules and principles of due process in criminal law--how to, and how not to, investigate crime and criminal suspects, prosecute the accused, adjudicate criminal cases, and punish the convicted--appear in the traditional sources of Islamic law: the Quran, the Sunna, and classical jurisprudence. But few of these rules and principles are followed in the modern-day practice of Islamic criminal law. Rather, states that claim to practice Islamic criminal law today mostly follow laws and practices of criminal procedure that were adopted from European nations in the twentieth century, without reference to the constraints and protections of Islamic law itself. To …

Liberalism In Decline: Legislative Trends Limiting Religious Freedom In Russia And Central Asia, Elizabeth Clark

Faculty Scholarship

Religious freedom, among other human rights, has increasingly been restricted in Russia and Central Asia. Recent empirical research has shown that increased governmental regulation of religion causes increased social hostilities over religion and has shown the connections between religious freedom and numerous other civil rights and social goods. The U.S. government has particularly recognized the importance of religious freedom in Russia, mandating significant restrictions on aid based on the Russian interpretation of restrictive religion legislation passed in 1997. Since that time, however, virtually no attention has been given to draft legislation in this area in Russia and common trends seen …

Dignity, History, And Religious-Group Rights, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Religion And Theistic Faith: On Koppelman, Leiter, Secular Purpose, And Accomodations, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

What makes religion distinctive, and how does answering that question help us answer questions regarding religious freedom in a liberal democracy? In their books on religion in the United States under our Constitution, Andrew Koppelman (DefendingAmerican Religious Neutrality) and Brian Leiter (Why Tolerate Religion?) offer sharply different answers to this set of questions. This review essay first explores why we might treat religion distinctively, suggesting that in our constitutional order, it makes sense to focus on theism (or any roughly similar analogue) as the hallmark of religious belief and practice. Neither Koppelman nor Leiter focuses on this, in part because …

Charter Schools, The Establishment Clause, And The Neoliberal Turn In Public Education, Aaron J. Saiger

Faculty Scholarship

Regardless whether the American charter school can improve academic performance and provide effective alternatives to traditional public schools, its steady entrenchment as an institution portends significant, destabilizing changes across education law. In no area will its impact be more profound than the law of religion and schooling. Despite the general view that charter schools are public schools, charters’ neoliberal character — they are privately created and managed, and chosen by consumers in a marketplace — makes them private schools for Establishment Clause purposes, notwithstanding their public subsidy. This conclusion, which rests in substantial part on the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris vouchers …

Religious Toleration And Claims Of Conscience, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

One aspect of the issue of toleration of religion is how far the government and others should recognize religious claims of conscience. Such claims will be present in any liberal democracy. The particular controversies on which attention is mainly focused shift, but certain underlying themes remain.

In this essay, I outline what I take to be the major issues about government recognition of religious claims of conscience. I then address the special problems created when a claim of conscience ends up competing with an opposing claim of conscience or with basic premises about fairness and justice. We can conceive of …

With Religious Liberty For All: A Defense Of The Affordable Care Act's Contraception Coverage Mandate, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

The “contraception mandate” of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 poses a straightforward question for religious liberty jurisprudence: Must government excuse a believer from complying with a religiously burdensome law, when doing so would violate the liberty of others by imposing on them the costs and consequences of religious beliefs that they do not share? To ask this question is to answer it: One's religious liberty does not include the right to interfere with the liberty of others, and thus religious liberty may not be used by a religious employer to force employees to pay the costs …

Finding A Voice Of Challenge: The State Responds To Religious Women And Their Communities, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

The appropriate response of Western nation-states to the situation of religious women who are caught between democratic norms of gender equality and the demands of their religious community has been a source of tension in many Western nations, including the U.S. This article attempts to give voice to the complex nature of women’s religious conduct as tied to their identities, and to propose alternative ways that the state might further its norms of gender equality besides intrusive regulation of religious communities.

Islam In The Mind Of American Courts, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

This article surveys references to Islam and Muslims in American court opinions from 1800 to 1960. It argues that American judges as a group portray an ambivalent attitude toward Muslims, some treating Islam disparagingly or as an exotic and fanciful religion, and others emphasizing the religious equality that Muslims deserve

Selling Land And Religion, Eang L. Ngov

Faculty Scholarship

Thousands of religious monuments have been donated to cities and towns. Under Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, local, state, and federal governments now have greater freedom to accept religious monuments, symbols, and objects donated to them for permanent display in public spaces without violating the Free Speech Clause. Now that governments may embrace religious monuments and symbols as their own speech, the obvious question arises whether governments violate the Establishment Clause by permanently displaying a religiously significant object. Fearing an Establishment Clause violation, some governmental bodies have privatized religious objects and the land beneath them by selling or transferring the …

Church And State: An Economic Analysis, Keith N. Hylton, Yulia Rodionova, Fei Deng

Faculty Scholarship

What purpose is served by a government's protection of religious liberty? Many have been suggested, the most prominent of which center on the protection of freedom of belief and expression. However, since every regulation potentially interferes with religious freedom, it is useful to consider more concrete purposes that could suggest limits on the degree to which religious liberty should be protected. This paper focuses on the concrete economic consequences of state regulation of religion. We examine the effects of state regulation on corruption, economic growth, and inequality. The results suggest that laws and practices burdening religion enhance corruption. Laws burdening …

Government Disapproval Of Religion, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s “Endorsement Test” for evaluating the constitutionality of government sponsored symbols, displays, and messages regarding religion is notoriously controversial and has engendered enormous scholarly attention. In addition to government “endorsement” of religion, however, the test also prohibits the government from sending a message of “disapproval” of religion. The disapproval side of the Endorsement Test has not been subject to almost any scholarly discussion, which is not surprising given that until recently the courts have had no reason to entertain, much less sustain, challenges to alleged government disapproval of religion. In the last few years, however, due to a …

Sandel On Religion In The Public Square, Hugh Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

In the final chapter of "Justice" (2009), Sandel calls for a “new politics of the common good,” which he presents as an alternative to John Rawls’s idea of public reason. Sandel calls “misguided” Rawls’s search for “principles of justice that are neutral among competing conceptions of the good life.” According to Sandel, “[i]t is not always possible to define our rights and duties without taking up substantive moral questions; and even when it’s possible it may not be desirable.” In taking up these moral questions, Sandel writes, we must allow specifically religious convictions and reasons into the sphere of public …

Nonbelievers, Nelson Tebbe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Joining Or Changing The Conversation - Catholic Social Thought And Intellectual Property, Frank Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Between Liberalism And Theocracy, John D. Inazu

Faculty Scholarship

Our symposium conveners have focused us on “the relationship between liberalism and Christianity and their influence on American constitutionalism.” My objective is to complicate the relationship and reorient the influence. The focus of my inquiry is the liberty of conscience and its implications for the relationship between church and state. By approaching these issues through the lens of political theology (as distinct from either political or constitutional theory), hope to show that some of the most significant embodiments of conscience in the American colonies can neither be squared with an individualistic liberalism (as some on the left are prone to …

I'M A Laycockian! (For The Most Part), Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

You know you’ve made it, scholarly-wise speaking, when a major publishing house and a preeminent university approach you to ask whether they could publish a four-volume set of your collected works. Such is the situation of Douglas Laycock (DL), long-time Professor at the University of Texas School of Law, now moving from the University of Michigan to the University of Virginia and most certainly on just about everyone’s short list of greatest church–state scholars of the past quarter-century. Volume One of the collection was published in 2010; it is subtitled “Overviews & History” and contains roughly forty pieces written by …

Eagle Party, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

The Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge is a straight shot up Havana Street off of I-70 just east of downtown Denver, past an Office Depot and the national headquarters of a company called Scott’s Liquid Gold. No signs point to the Refuge, which was created on the site of a chemical munitions facility back in the mid-1990s and is now home to a herd of bison, dozens of burrowing owls, and so many furry prairie dogs that a roadside sign warns oncoming traffic of their potential “XING.” The entrance is hardly inviting, although the officer working the booth there …

Witchcraft Accusations And Human Rights: Case Studies From Malawi, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Katherine Glenn

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores potential community-based interventions to assist victims of witchcraft accusations, based on forty-five case studies from an experimental mobile legal-aid clinic in Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa where witchcraft accusations are widespread and often irreparably harm those accused. In Malawi, the accused are mainly older women who are often blamed for bewitching young children.

Religious And Political Virtues And Values In Congruence Or Conflict?: On Smith, Bob Jones University, And Christian Legal Society, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

A basic tension in the U.S. constitutional and political order exists between two important ideas about the relationship between civil society and the state: (1) families, religious institutions, voluntary associations, and other groups are foundational sources, or “seedbeds,” of virtues and values that undergird constitutional democracy, and (2) these same institutions guard against governmental orthodoxy and overweening governmental power by generating their own distinctive virtues and values and by being independent locations of power and authority. The first idea envisions a comfortable congruence between civil society and government: the values and virtues - and habits and skills - cultivated in …

Undoing Neutrality?: From Church-State Separation To Judeo-Christian Tolerance, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fundamental Questions About The Religion Clauses: Reflections On Some Critiques, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

This essay responds to some major critiques of my work on the religion clauses. The effort has seemed worth undertaking because many issues the critics raise lie at the core of one’s approach to free exercise and nonestablishment, and some of those issues matter greatly for constitutional adjudication more broadly. Like any author, perhaps, my reaction to reading some comments has been that I did not quite say that, but I shall not bore you with these quibbles about how well I explained myself in the past. Rather, I shall try to confront the genuinely basic questions that many of …

The Significance Of Conscience, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Conscience, like most words that describe human experience and recommend human action, has changed its meanings over time and takes on subtly different meanings in different contexts. Since the time of Thomas Aquinas, when conscience referred to moral judgments about action, and our founding era, when “freedom of conscience” dominantly referred to individual religious liberty, our understanding has evolved. In this paper, I concentrate on present usage. My aims are partially descriptive and mainly normative. My hope is that by clarifying various ways the notion of conscience is conceived, I can contribute to a thoughtful elaboration of normative issues …

In Celebration Of Steven Shiffrin's The Religious Left And Church-State Relations, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Steven Shiffrin's The Religious Left and Church-State Relations is a truly remarkable book in many respects. I shall briefly note a few of its striking features, including some illustrative passages, and outline a number of its central themes, before tackling what for me is its most challenging and perplexing set of theses – the relations between constitutional and political discourse, and between religious liberals, on the one hand, and religious conservatives and secular liberals on the other.

We might well think of this as two books in one: a book about the constitutional law of free exercise and non-establishment, and …