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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Next Battleground? Personhood, Privacy, And Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Mark Strasser
The Next Battleground? Personhood, Privacy, And Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Mark Strasser
Mark Strasser
Personhood statutes and amendments have been proposed in several states. As a general matter, they establish as a matter of state law that legal personhood begins at conception. Such laws may have implications for state policies concerning abortion and contraception, and will have implications for other areas of law including state policies related to assisted reproductive technologies. Yet, some of the ways in which these different areas of law might be affected are not well understood and thus are explored here.
Ignore The Man Behind The Curtain: On The Government Speech Doctrine And What It Licenses, Mark Strasser
Ignore The Man Behind The Curtain: On The Government Speech Doctrine And What It Licenses, Mark Strasser
Mark Strasser
While federal and state governments have long been communicating to various audiences in multiple ways in a variety of contexts, the United States Supreme Court has only recently invoked the government speech doctrine to protect certain state acts and policies from First Amendment challenge. The contours of the doctrine are rather fuzzy—there are no clear criteria by which to determine when the government is speaking or what, if anything, the government must be saying in order for the doctrine’s protections to be invoked. This lack of clarity has caused great confusion in the lower courts—judges seem not to know how …
On Same-Sex Marriage And Matters Of Conscience, Mark Strasser
On Same-Sex Marriage And Matters Of Conscience, Mark Strasser
Mark Strasser
In our increasingly diverse society, it is ever-more important to teach tolerance of and respect for those having differing sexual orientations and religious beliefs. It thus might seem an ideal solution to include conscience clauses in legislation affording same-sex couples the right to marry, whereby individuals with religious qualms about being in any way associated with such marriages may be legally excused from doing so. Yet, by creating one exception specifically for same-sex marriages rather than a more generalized exception for those with religious qualms about facilitating or being associated with marriages contrary to belief, the state may be undermining …