Law Commons^™

The Worst Choice For School Choice: Tuition Tax Credits Are A Bad Idea And Direct Funding Is Wiser, Michael J. Broyde, Anna G. Gabianelli

Faculty Articles

School choice is on the rise, and states use various mechanisms to implement it. One prevalent mechanism is also a uniquely problematic one: the tax credit. Tax credits are deficient at equitably distributing a benefit like school choice; they are costly, and they invite fraud. Instead of using tax credits, states opting for school choice programs should use direct funding. Direct funding will more efficiently achieve the goals of school choice because it can be regulated like any other government benefit, even if it ends up subsidizing religious private schools.

Tax credits’ prevalence is not inexplicable, of course. It is …

The New Fourth Era Of American Religious Freedom, John Witte Jr., Eric Wang

Faculty Articles

The U.S. Supreme Court has entered decisively into a new fourth era of American religious freedom. In the first era, from 1776 to 1940, the Court largely left governance of religious freedom to the individual states and did little to enforce the First Amendment Religion Clauses. In the second era, from 1940 to 1990, the Court “incorporated” the First Amendment into the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause and applied both a strong Free Exercise Clause and a strong Establishment Clause against federal, state, and local governments alike. In the third era, from the mid-1980s to 2010, the Court softened the …

Using Bruen To Overturn New York Times V. Sullivan, Michael L. Smith, Alexander S. Hiland

Faculty Articles

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is a foundational, well regarded First Amendment case, Justice Clarence Thomas has repeatedly called on the Court to revisit it. Sullivan, Thomas claims, is policy masquerading as constitutional law, and it makes almost no effort to ground itself in the original meaning of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Thomas argues that at the time of the founding, libelous statements were routinely subject to criminal prosecution including libel of public figures and public officials.

This Essay connects Justice Thomas's calls to revisit Sullivan to his recent opinion for the Court in New York State Rifle …

In Contracts We Trust (And No One Can Change Their Mind)! There Should Be No Special Treatment For Religious Arbitration, Michael J. Broyde, Alexa J. Windsor

Faculty Articles

The recent article In God We Trust (Unless We Change Our Mind): How State of Mind Relates to Religious Arbitration ("In God We Trust") proposes that those who sign arbitration agreements that consent to a religious legal system as the basis of the rules of arbitration be allowed to back out of such agreements based on their constitutional right to free exercise. This article is a response and is divided into two sections. In the first section, we show that such an exemption would violate the Federal Arbitration Act's (FAA) basic rules preventing the states from heightened regulation of arbitration …

Avoidance Creep, Charlotte Garden

Faculty Articles

At first glance, constitutional avoidance—the principle that courts construe statutes so as to avoid conflict with the Constitution whenever possible—appears both unremarkable and benign. But when courts engage in constitutional avoidance, they frequently construe statutory language in a manner contrary to both its plain meaning and to the underlying congressional intent. Then, successive decisions often magnify the problems of avoidance—a phenomenon I call “avoidance creep.” When a court distorts a statute in service of constitutional avoidance, a later court may amplify the distortion, incrementally changing both statutory and constitutional doctrine in ways that are unsupported by any existing rationale for …

"Closet Case": Boy Scouts Of America V. Dale And The Reinforcement Of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, And Transgender Invisibility, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

This Article argues that the Supreme Courts decision in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale misapplies and ignores controlling First Amendment precedent and incorrectly dermes "sexual identity" as a clinical or biological imposition that exists apart from expression or speech. This Article provides a doctrinal alternative to Dale that would protect vital interests in both equality and liberty and that would not condition, as does Dale, sexual "equality" upon the silencing of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals.