Law Commons^™

Religion As Disobedience, Xiao Wang

Vanderbilt Law Review

Religion today offers plaintiffs a ready path to disobey laws without consequence. Examples of such disobedience abound. In the past few years alone, courts have enjoined vaccine mandates, invalidated stay-at-home orders, and set aside antidiscrimination laws protecting same-sex couples. During the 2021-2022 Term, plaintiffs relied once again on free exercise to subvert laws governing public education, capital punishment, and school prayer. Some hospitals have begun denying fertility treatment to LGBTQ employees on this same basis.

How did religion become a skeleton key for lawbreaking without repercussion? The conventional wisdom is that, after decades of neglect, the Supreme Court finally began …

Baptizing O'Brien: Towards Intermediate Protection Of Religiously Motivated Expressive Conduct, Daniel J. Hay

Vanderbilt Law Review

Despite the relative prominence of religious expression in society' and its elevated status in constitutional law, the Supreme Court has struggled to articulate a consistent standard of review for neutral, generally applicable laws that indirectly burden religious expression. Since the late nineteenth century, the Court has vacillated between a highly deferential belief-action dichotomy and a more searching (albeit selectively applied) compelling interest test. Currently, the Court embraces a hybrid categorical-rational basis standard that relies in part upon a highly criticized assumption that the political process will be solicitous of minority religious practice. This retreat to rational basis has subordinated religious …

Toward A Rfra That Works, Nicholas Nugent

Vanderbilt Law Review

The history of the Supreme Court's First Amendment jurisprudence regarding the proper standard of protection for the free exercise of religion is complicated. In determining how the First Amendment speaks to situations in which generally applicable health, welfare, and safety laws incidentally or accidentally burden certain individuals' religious practices, the Court has vacillated between different standards and different extremes, overruling itself several times. Early on, the Court held that, provided the government did not interfere deliberately with religion for religious reasons, an inadvertent interference with religious practice raised no Free xercise Clause problem,' "no matter how trivial the state's nonreligious …

Changing The Rules Of Establishment Clause Litigation: An Alternative To The Public Expression Of Religion Act, Christopher D. Tomlinson

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 2004, the American Civil Liberties Union ("ACLU") threatened to sue the city of Redlands, California, if it did not remove a small cross from its city seal.' The cross represented the city's religious heritage and its history as a city of churches. Instead of facing the possibility of litigation and the more daunting risk of losing in court and being forced to pay the ACLU's attorneys' fees in addition to its own, the Redlands City Council agreed to change the seal. The City of Redlands not only could ill afford the risk of paying the ACLU's attorneys' fees; it …

Red, White, But Mostly Blue: The Validity Of Modern Sunday Closing Laws Under The Establishment Clause, Lesley Lawrence-Hammer

Vanderbilt Law Review

On a Sunday morning, the average American might hope to enjoy any number of activities: attending a church service, drinking a mimosa with brunch, shopping for clothes at the mall, looking for a new car, or hunting with friends. However, in a surprisingly large number of states, only one of these activities would be legal: going to church.

Such is the result of blue laws,' the colloquial term for state statutes that regulate or prohibit entertainment and commercial activities on Sundays or religious holidays. Originating in England, blue laws were enacted throughout colonial America in an effort to protect the …

Islamic Arbitration: A New Path For Interpreting Islamic Legal Contracts, Charles P. Trumbull

Vanderbilt Law Review

Muslims living in a secular, liberal democratic state face a fundamental dilemma: reconciling the obligation to live according to Shari'a with their civic duty to follow secular laws. Muslims attempt to resolve this dilemma in a number of ways. Some enter public office and try to influence the generally applicable laws of their country. Others advocate greater legal pluralism, thus allowing Muslims to settle certain disputes under Islamic law. In Canada, for example, the Islamic Institute for Civil Justice ("IICJ") announced plans to create Shari'a tribunals and claimed that it would begin arbitrating family and commercial disputes according to Islamic …

Silence Of The Lambs: Are States Attempting To Establish Religion In Public Schools?, Linda D.W. Lam

Vanderbilt Law Review

The proper role of religion in public schools has been a topic of bitter debate for many years. While one group of individuals believes that there should be a complete separation of church and state, another group believes that religion should have an integral place in public education. Although both groups have looked to the circumstances surrounding the enactment of the First Amendment to support their respective positions, each has been unable to find clear, definitive support regarding the appropriate relationship between religion and public schools, as there was no public education system at that time. One major issue that …

The New Face Of Creationism: The Establishment Clause And The Latest Efforts To Suppress Evolution In Public Schools, Deborah A. Reule

Vanderbilt Law Review

Over seventy-five years after the impassioned debate be- tween William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow echoed through a hot Tennessee courtroom, the controversial confrontation over science, religion, law, and education can still be heard in legislative halls, courtrooms, schools, and homes across the nation. The now infamous "Scopes Monkey Trial" of 19253 brought the debate between religious fundamentalism and modern day scientific theory to the forefront and sparked twenty state legislatures to consider measures to prohibit the teaching of evolution in public schools. Nearly a century later, the dispute rages on. Twenty states considered anti-evolution measures in both the 1920s …

The Parsonage Allowance Exclusion: Past, Present, And Future, Matthew W. Foster

Vanderbilt Law Review

Religious freedom has played a pivotal role in the history and cultural development of the United States.' Religion historically has been considered a fundamental aspect of American culture, resulting in the granting of numerous legal rights and privileges to religious personnel and institutions. These grants stem from the protections in the Bill of Rights and include privileges that, though of undoubted importance, are not known widely and may fail to provoke controversy to the same extent as perceived infringements or endorsements of religion.'

Section 107 of the Internal Revenue Code grants one of the lesser- known privileges. This statute permits …

Religion And The Public Schools, P. Raymond Bartholomew

Vanderbilt Law Review

The first amendment to the United States Constitution contains a dual command with respect to governmental involvement with religion: government must "make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Although some have insisted that the first amendment requires a strict separation of church and state, the conclusion is inescapable that the two clauses were intended to operate together in harmony. It is apparent, therefore, that the conflicting policies of the "no establishment" clause and the "free exercise" clause must be balanced and reconciled. The United States Supreme Court has held that this balancing effort …

Chief Justice Waite And The "Twin Relic": Reynolds V. United States, C. Peter Magrath

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the landmark case of Reynolds v. United States, the United States Supreme Court held that a general law prohibiting polygamy did not abridge the religious freedom of members of the Mormon faith guaranteed by the first amendment. The author here explores the background of Chief Justice Waite's opinion in Reynolds v. United States: the tenets and development of the Mormon faith in the United States, the character of the Waite Court, and the sources and development of Chief Justice Waite's opinion in the case.

Book Reviews, Ronan E. Degnan, Jerold Israel, Robert F. Drinan S.J.

Vanderbilt Law Review

Cases and Materials on Debtor and Creditor

By Vern Countryman

Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1964. Pp. lxiii, 841. $12.50.

reviewer: Ronan E. Degnan

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The Supreme Court on Trial

By Charles S. Hyneman

New York: Atherton Press, 1963. Pp. IX, 308. $6.50.

reviewer: Jerold Israel

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Religion and American Constitutions (1963 Rosenthal Lectures)

By Wilbur G. Katz

Northwestern University Press 1964. Pp. 114. $3.50.

reviewer: Rev. Robert F. Drinan, S.J.

Book Notes, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Diary of A.D.A.

By Martin M. Frank.

New York: Henry Holt & Co.,1960. Pp. 274. $3.95.

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Islamic Law in the Modern World

By J.N.D. Anderson.

New York:New York University Press, 1959. Pp. xx, 106. $2.75.

Austin's Theory Of The Separation Of Law And Morals, Samuel E. Stumpf

Vanderbilt Law Review

The lingering influence of the natural law theory in England brought forth a powerful new philosophy of law. The chief features of this new theory were developed by Hobbes and Bentham and found their most compelling formulation in the works of the "analytical"jurist, John Austin. What concerned these men most was how to deal with the existence of morally bad laws. Sir William Blackstone had said in his Commentaries that the laws of God are superior in obligation to all other laws; that no human laws should be allowed to contradict them; that human laws are of no validity if …

The Christian Lawyer As A Churchman, William Stringfellow

Vanderbilt Law Review

Comparative studies of moral theology and legal philosophy are irrelevant if they are isolated from the concrete life of worship. Similarly, the question of the Christian vocation of the practicing lawyer must not be solely an attempt to articulate some ethics to guide a lawyer in his decisions in work. The Christian life is not so much about deciding and doing as it is about being that which Christians are called to be. Precisely, Christians are what they are called to be in worship. Worship is not an ancillary folk activity to which Christians resort out of sentiment or superstition, …

The Christian Lawyer As A Public Servant, William S. Ellis

Vanderbilt Law Review

This paper is concerned with the general topic of the Christian lawyer as a public servant. The paper attempts to describe very briefly the lawyer in his practice of law and in his relation to the legal and political systems, and the relevance of the Church to the law in each of these areas. The topic is a difficult one, for the writer would suggest that the lawyer by his very trade is "a Pharisee" and rarely a Christian.

Yet the lawyer is one of the most important and influential groups in this country. From the days of the pioneer …

Summary Of A Statement Of The Effect Of Religious Principles On Lawyers' Ethical Problems, F. B. Mackinnon

Vanderbilt Law Review

The lawyer-client relationship provides an opportunity for the intimate relationship in which religious principles can best be acted upon. But taking advantage of this opportunity may destroy the lawyer's usefulness to the legal system and be harmful to the client's purely "legal" affairs. And the trends of the profession toward specialization and combination reduce the intimacy of the lawyer-client relationship and emphasize the lawyer's concern with the legal aspects of his client's problem.

A Bibliography On Christian Faith And The Law, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Church and State SCM Press, London, 1939

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Christian Ethics and Social Policy Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, N.Y., 1946

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The Destiny of Man Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, N.Y., 1937

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The Divine Imperative Lutterworth Press, London, 1937

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The Theology of Religious Vocation Herder, St. Louis, Mo., 1951.

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Moberly, Responsibility (Riddle Memorial Lectures at the University of Durham, 1951). Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y., 1951

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The Nature and Destiny of Man Charles Scribner's Sons, New York,N.Y., 1943

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Christian Philosophy in the Common Law Blackfriars, Oxford,1947.

Book Reviews, Nels F.S. Ferre (Reviewer), Seymour W. Wurfel (Reviewer), Lloyd S. Adams (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

Few topics are currently more at the center of both interest and need than that of Dr. Stumpf's new book. The ship of democracy is being tossed by heavy seas. Many are looking for a haven of faith. They tell us that the ship cannot stay afloat unless it reaches the well-protected harbor of religion. It needs at least to be overhauled, they say, and made more seaworthy in that harbor before it braves again the heavy onslaughts which it must necessarily breast. Dr. Stumpf probes too deeply into the relation between democracy and religion, however, to fall prey to …