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Religion Law

Michael A Helfand

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby

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When Judges Are Theologians: Adjudicating Religious Questions, Michael A. Helfand Dec 2017

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 …

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Religious Institutionalism, Implied Consent And The Value Of Voluntarism, Michael A. Helfand Dec 2014

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 …

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