Law Commons^™

Reasoning About Faith: On The Religious Lawyer, Rakesh K. Anand

FIU Law Review

The religious lawyer is an individual who understands his or her religious practice to be a way of life and who, within the context of a commitment to his or her religious practice as such, takes up the professional practice of law. Unquestionably, this individual is worthy of our respect, given the seriousness with which the individual approaches his or her faith. At the same time, it is precisely this seriousness that points us in a direction that is perhaps difficult for many to go. Specifically, because a way of life represents a total activity of the self from which …

The Practice Of Law As Christian Discipleship, Nathan Chapman

Scholarly Works

“Can the ordinary practice of law be a religious calling?” In a number of scholarly books and articles, as a teacher, and as a mentor, Robert (Bob) Cochrane has answered this question with a resounding “yes.” This essay, part of a festschrift published in Bob’s honor by the Pepperdine Law Review, engages with his work to propose a framework of Christian ethics for reconceiving the practice of law as a form of Christian discipleship. It argues that Christians should understand the practice of law as participation in government-as judgment, participation that is always fraught with the risks of deceit, injustice, …

Reimagining The Death Penalty: Targeting Christians, Conservatives, Spearit

Articles

This Article is an interdisciplinary response to an entrenched legal and cultural problem. It incorporates legal analysis, religious study and the anthropological notion of “culture work” to consider death penalty abolitionism and prospects for abolishing the death penalty in the United States. The Article argues that abolitionists must reimagine their audiences and repackage their message for broader social consumption, particularly for Christian and conservative audiences. Even though abolitionists are characterized by some as “bleeding heart” liberals, this is not an accurate portrayal of how the death penalty maps across the political spectrum. Abolitionists must learn that conservatives are potential allies …

An Economic Approach To Religious Exemptions, Stephanie H. Barclay

Journal Articles

Externalities caused by religious exemptions have been getting the spotlight again in light a case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this term: Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Some argue that religious individuals should be required to internalize the costs they impose on third parties and thus should be denied the right to practice that harmful behavior. These new progressive theories about harm trade on rhetoric and normative intuitions regarding externalities and costs. But curiously, these theories also largely ignore an influential theoretical movement that has studied externalities and costs for the last fifty years: law and economics.

This Article …

A Common Enterprise: Law And The Connection Between Civil And Heavenly Realms In The Writings Of John Calvin, Kenneth L. Townsend

Concordia Law Review

The common ends that once united spiritual and civil realms have been privatized as those ends have come to be seen as controversial and plural, rather than unifying and common. Acknowledging the diversity of ends resulted in increased attention to uniform rules. Since there was no longer agreement about what teloi mattered for society, law gradually lost its aspirational features and became simply a way to limit and punish uncivil and criminal behavior.

The formal separation, but ultimate unity, of civil and heavenly spheres, of norm with vision, articulated by Calvin, allowed him to be both idealistic and realistic about …

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

Michael A Helfand

There Are No Ordinary People: Christian Humanism And Christian Legal Thought, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

This short essay is a contribution to a volume celebrating a new casebook, "Christian Legal Thought: Materials and Cases", edited by Profs. Patrick McKinley Brennan and William S. Brewbaker.

To Accommodate Or Not To Accommodate: (When) Should The State Regulate Religion To Protect The Rights Of Children And Third Parties?, Hillel Y. Levin, Allan J. Jacobs, Kavita Shah Arora

Washington and Lee Law Review

When should we accommodate religious practices? When should we demand that religious groups instead conform to social or legal norms? Who should make these decisions, and how? These questions lie at the very heart of our contemporary debates in the field of Law and Religion.

Particularly thorny issues arise where religious practices may impose health-related harm to children within a religious group or to third parties. Unfortunately, legislators, courts, scholars, ethicists, and medical practitioners have not offered a consistent way to analyze such cases, so the law is inconsistent. This Article suggests, first, that the lack of consistency is a …

To Accommodate Or Not To Accommodate: (When) Should The State Regulate Religion To Protect The Rights Of Children And Third Parties?, Hillel Y. Levin, Allan J. Jacobs, Kavita Arora

Scholarly Works

When should we accommodate religious practices? When should we demand that religious groups instead conform to social and legal norms? Who should make these decisions, and how? These questions lie at the very heart of our contemporary debates in the field of Law and Religion.

Particularly thorny issues arise where religious practices may impose health-related harm to children within a religious group or to third parties. Unfortunately, legislators, scholars, courts, ethicists, and medical practitioners have not offered a consistent way to analyze such cases and the law is inconsistent. This Article suggests that the lack of consistency is a troubling …

The Women Of The Wall: A Metaphor For National And Religious Identity, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

The Women of the Wall wish to participate in communal prayer in the women’s section of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Their practice is to pray as a group, wrap themselves in a tallit, and read from the Torah scroll. They represent Jewish pluralism in that their group includes Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and secular women. They represent openness to change in that they base their claims on Halakhic interpretation, thereby embracing the capacity of Jewish law to evolve. This article reviews the resistance of the religious and political establishment in Israel to their claim and their struggle, unsuccessful so far, …

Religious Rights In Historical, Theoretical And International Context: Hobby Lobby As A Jurisprudential Anomaly, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

The United States has a long and complicated history concerning religious rights, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., has done little to clear up the jurisprudence in this field. Although the decision will doubtless generate a great deal of commentary as a matter of constitutional and statutory law, the better approach is to consider whether and to what extent the majority and dissenting opinions reflect the fundamental principles of religious liberty. Only in that context can the merits of such a novel decision be evaluated free from political and other biases.

This …

Constitutional Contraction: Religion And The Roberts Court, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

This essay argues that the most salient feature to emerge in the first decade of the Roberts Court’s law and religion jurisprudence is the contraction of the constitutional law of religious freedom. It illustrates that contraction in three ways.

First, contraction of judicial review. Only once has the Roberts Court exercised the power of judicial review to strike down federal, state, or local legislation, policies, or practices on the ground that they violate the Free Exercise or Establishment Clauses. In this constitutional context the Court has been nearly uniformly deferential to government laws and policies. That distinguishes it from its …

Rethinking Religious Minorities' Political Power, Hillel Y. Levin

Scholarly Works

This Article challenges the assumption that small religious groups enjoy little political power. According to the standard view, courts, because of their countermajoritarian qualities, are indispensable for protecting religious minority groups from oppression by the majority. But this assumption fails to account for the many and varied ways in which the majoritarian branches have chosen to protect and accommodate even unpopular religious minority groups, as well as the courts’ failures to do so.

The Article offers a public choice analysis to account for the surprising majoritarian reality of religious accommodationism. Further, it explores the important implications of this reality for …

Twenty-Five Years Of Law And Religion Scholarship: Some Reflections, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

In this address, the author describes some of the significant movements in law and religion scholarship over the past twenty-five years, including the dialogue between traditional church-state and international human rights scholars and outside scholars, including those writing from within American minority faith traditions.

Avoiding Religious Apartheid: Affording Equal Treatment For Student-Initiated Religious Expression In Public Schools , John W. Whitehead

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

To Teach And Persuade, Sherman J. Clark

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Seeking An Islamic Reflective Equilibrium: A Response To Abdullahi A. An-Na'im’S Complementary, Not Competing, Claims Of Law And Religion: An Islamic Perspective, Mohammad H. Fadel

Pepperdine Law Review

Professor 'Abdallahi Na'im argues that there can be no conflict between religion and the state because religion and politics are part of different normative orders, and thus it is not conceivable that a conflict can arise between them. I argue that Na'im's solution to the problematic relationship of religion to state shares the same conceptual terrain as separationism in American constitutional law, a position which has grown increasingly untenable as a result of the increasing religious pluralism in the United States and the expansion of the government into areas of life in a manner that would have been inconceivable even …

Bias And Religious Truth-Seeking In Proselytization Restrictions: An Atypical Case Study Of Singapore, Jianlin Chen

Jianlin Chen

Proselytisation restrictions are typically subjected to two objections. First, these restrictions curtail religious liberty and impede religious truth-seeking. Second, these restrictions tend to favour politically dominant religions and discriminate against minority religions. The restrictions on offensive religious propagation in Singapore thus present an interesting departure in which sanctioned religions are not politically marginalised religions, whereas protected religions include numerical minority religions that are socially, economically, and politically disadvantaged. This article utilises the atypical case study of Singapore to highlight the limitations of the two typical objections toward proselytisation restrictions. In particular, the emphasis on religious truth-seeking underpinning these objections is …

Hauerwasian Christian Legal Theory, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This Essay, which was written for a Law and Contemporary Problems symposium on Stanley Hauerwas, tries to develop an account of public engagement in Hauerwas’ theology. The Essay distinguishes between two kinds of public engagement, “prophetic” and “participatory.” Christian engagement is prophetic when it criticizes or condemns the state, often by urging the state to honor or alter its true principles. In participatory engagement, by contrast, the church intervenes more directly in the political process, as when it works with lawmakers or mobilizes grass roots action. Prophetic engagement is often one-off; participatory engagement is more sustained. Because they worry intensely …

Who Owns The Soul Of The Child?: An Essay On Religious Parenting Rights And The Enfranchisement Of The Child, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

At common law, and (for most of the nation's history) under state statutory regimes, the authority of the parent to direct the child's upbringing was a matter of duty, not right, and chief among parental obligations was the duty to provide the child with a suitable education. It has long been a legal commonplace that at common law the parent had a "sacred right" to the custody of his or her child, that the parent's right to control the upbringing of the child was almost absolute. But this reading of the law is sorely anachronistic, less history than advocacy on …

A Higher Law: Abraham Lincoln's Use Of Biblical Imagery, Wilson Huhn

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Lincoln’s use of biblical imagery in seven of his works: the Peoria Address, the House Divided Speech, his Address at Chicago, his Speech at Lewistown, the Word Fitly Spoken fragment, the Gettysburg Address, and the Second Inaugural. Lincoln uses biblical imagery to express the depth of his own conviction, the stature of the founders of this country, the timeless and universal nature of the principles of the Declaration, and the magnitude of our moral obligation to defend those principles. Lincoln persuaded the American people to embrace the standard “all men are created equal” and to make it part of our …

A Higher Law: Abraham Lincoln's Use Of Biblical Imagery, Wilson Huhn

Wilson R. Huhn

Lincoln’s use of biblical imagery in seven of his works: the Peoria Address, the House Divided Speech, his Address at Chicago, his Speech at Lewistown, the Word Fitly Spoken fragment, the Gettysburg Address, and the Second Inaugural. Lincoln uses biblical imagery to express the depth of his own conviction, the stature of the founders of this country, the timeless and universal nature of the principles of the Declaration, and the magnitude of our moral obligation to defend those principles. Lincoln persuaded the American people to embrace the standard “all men are created equal” and to make it part of our …

Law Asks For Trust, Nathan Chapman

Scholarly Works

This Article offers a reading of chapters 1 and 2 of the book of Genesis, informed by concerns for the social effects of law. Part I considers the implications of God's method of creating the world by speech in the first chapter of Genesis. Part II turns to God's prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The content of the prohibition and the nature of the threatened penalty suggest that the prohibition is a rule against disobedience generally, paradigmatic of a general claim by God to be the ruler. With the creation …

Chaos, Law, And God: The Religious Meanings Of Homosexuality, Jay Michaelson

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article argues that the religious meaning of homosexuality cannot be explained merely in terms of homophobia, "church and state," or traditional values versus progressive ones. Rather, the regulation of sexuality has a particular religious meaning: sexuality is a primary site in which religious law is engendered, where the lawfulness of religion meets the chaos beyond it. Whether in Biblical times or today, changing the way sexuality is regulated is a threat to the notion of order itself, as construed by Jewish and Christian religion. Arguments about gay rights, same-sex marriage, and related issues are not merely arguments informed by …

Book Review, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

This book brings together two previously separate aspects of Michael J. Perry’s thoughtful and pioneering scholarship dealing with the proper relation of morality (especially religious morality) to law and human rights and the role of courts in protecting human rights.

What Yoder Wrought: Religious Disparagement, Parental Alienation And The Best Interests Of The Child, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Despite its grounding in a specific and peculiar set of facts, the strict scrutiny mandate of Wisconsin v. Yoder (decided in 1972) has changed the constitutional landscape of custody cases - - and it has done so in a way that is unsound both as a matter of law and policy. Following Yoder, most courts require a showing of harm to the child, or a substantial threat of harm to the child, before placing any restrictions on exposure to a parent’s religious beliefs and practices. This harm standard leaves children in an untenable position when parents compete for “spiritual custody,” …

Secularization, Legal Indeterminacy, And Habermas's Discourse Theory Of Law, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

This Article focuses on Habermas’s sophisticated awareness of the tension between secularization of law and legal indeterminacy and treats his discourse theory of law as a significant test of the feasibility of reconciling these claims. In an earlier article, I criticized Habermas’s discourse of justification and his claim that it legitimated the law independently of a religious or metaphysical worldview. Even assuming I was misguided in that critique, this Article argues that Habermas’s discourse of application is incoherent and fails to maintain the secularization of the law in the face of legal indeterminacy. Given Habermas’s failure, contemporary legal theory needs …

Beyond Theocracy And Secularism (Part I): Toward A New Paradigm For Law And Religion, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

As part of a larger project challenging and moving beyond the premodern and modern paradigms, this article focuses on the modern paradigm and its notion of secularization. Section II will discuss the origin of the modern paradigm as a reaction to the religious pluralism and the religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth century such as the Thirty Years War in Europe (1618-48) and the English Civil War (1642-51) resulting from the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation divided the Western part of the Christian tradition into separate confessional institutions based on different theological interpretations of Christianity such as Lutheran, Calvinist, and …

Symposium Introduction, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

The articles and essays in this Symposium should greatly aid disclosing key presuppositions of religionists and secularists by thinking about the law (rather than through the law) and by employing other disciplinary perspectives and methods to provide a more sophisticated understanding of law and religion. I will provide a brief summary of each article and essay and indicate the methods or disciplinary perspectives employed by them in their analysis.

Judaism Without Ordinary Law: Toward A Broader View Of Sanctification, Jonathan R. Cohen

UF Law Faculty Publications

With the functional constriction of Jewish law to the ritual, it is easy to relegate Torah and, with it, our sense of sanctification, to the ritual. Such is a great loss. Recognizing sanctification as not only separation but also elevation may help us see the possibility of pursuing sanctification throughout our lives. In other words, the legal constriction produced by history should not become a spiritual one as well.