Law Commons^™

Think We’Re Powerless Against Hate Speech? The Constitution Provides Plenty Of Room To Address It, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Calif. Supreme Court Right To Strike Down Law Requiring Trump To Release Tax Returns To Get On The Ballot, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

The Unnecessary And Unfortunate Focus On “Animus,” “Bare Desire To Harm,” And “Bigotry” In Analyzing Opposition To Gay And Lesbian Rights, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

I am delighted to participate in this symposium on Professor Linda C. McClain’s wonderful new book, Who’s the Bigot? Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law. All of the other papers in this symposium focus on Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (and thus connect with Chapter Eight of her book, on claims of religious exemptions from protections of gay and lesbian rights), while my piece will join issue with the related Chapter Seven, on bigotry, motives, and morality in the Supreme Court’s gay and lesbian rights cases. In this brief Essay, I cannot do justice …

The Impact Of Edwards V. Aguillard On Science Education In Louisiana Public Schools, Abigail Mcdonough

Senior Honors Theses

The landmark Louisiana case Edwards v. Aguillard ushered in a new era of legislation in which certain ideas are discriminated against because of their religious basis. Due to the Court’s misinterpretation of evidence and employment of a faulty test for a secular purpose, the Court is responsible for disastrous and far-reaching implications. This thesis will examine how the 1987 Supreme Court case Aguillard shifted American science education away from the exploration of multiple competing theories of man’s origins in the classroom. Although America was founded on principles such as freedom of religion and thought which should be protected, the Aguillard …

Don’T Lock Trump Up, Just Because Mueller Said You Can, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

Scotus Gerrymandering Case: Roberts Didn’T Defend Constitutional Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

The 16th Annual Diversity Symposium Dinner, April 4, 2019, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Interview Of Margaret Mcguinness, Ph.D., Margaret Mcguinness Ph.D., Stephen Pierce

All Oral Histories

Dr. Margaret McGuinness was born in 1953, in Providence, Rhode Island. She went to an all-girls Catholic high school called St. Mary’s Academy Bayview in Providence where she graduated in 1971. McGuinness went on to major in American Studies and Civilization as an undergraduate at Boston University graduating with a B.A in 1975. She continued her work at Boston University where McGuinness earned a master’s of theological studies (M.T.S) focusing on Biblical and Historical Studies in 1979. She would move to New York to work on her dissertation at Union Theological Seminary finishing with her Ph.D. in 1985 concentrating on …

The Supreme Court Will Preserve The Bladensburg Cross, But It Matters How, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.”

What Has Gone Wrong And What Can We Do About It?, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

What Is The Best Model For Investigating Presidential Wrongdoing Today?, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Reframing Radical Religion, Vanita Saleema Snow

Journal Articles

Like a thief in the night,1 politicians have stolen religion for their deceptive vices, using the term “radicalization” or “terrorism” to meet their needs.2 See Sahar F. Aziz, Caught in a Preventive Dragnet: Selective Counterterrorism in a Post-9/11 America, 47 GONZ. L. REV. 429, 481 (2012) (discussing how a police report equates “Muslim religiosity with radicalization toward terrorism”); David A. Bosworth, American Crusade: The Religious Roots of the War on Terror, 7 BARRY L. REV. 65, 65 (2006) (noting that American news and popular culture often portray religious people as “narrow-minded bigots out to destroy everything good and decent”); Ned …

How State Courts Can Help America Recover The Rule Of Law: The Pennsylvania Experience, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

A Call For America’S Law Professors To Oppose Court-Packing, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Religious Issues In Child Welfare Cases, Rebecca Stahl

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Faith Of My Fathers, Robert H. Jackson, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In his final years, United States Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson worked on a number of autobiographical writing projects. The previously unknown Jackson text that follows this Introduction is one such writing. Justice Jackson wrote this essay in longhand on thirteen yellow legal pad pages in the early 1950s. It is Jackson’s writing about religion in his life.

After Justice Jackson’s death in 1954, his secretary Elsie L. Douglas found the thirteen pages among his papers. She concluded that the pages were “undoubtedly prepared as part of his autobiography,” typed them up, and gave a file folder containing …

The Faith And Morals Of Justice Antonin Scalia, David Forte

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

It is because of Justice Scalia's suspicion of philosophy and of history that he becomes an outspoken textualist. But why should text carry greater authority? Why should the written word, rather than evolving tradition, be of higher authority, particularly to a Roman Catholic? To understand Antonin Scalia's affirmation of the centrality of text, we must, as many already have, seek to find out how the man viewed his religion and how he practiced it.

Rethinking Religious Objections (Old-Testament Based) To Same-Sex Marriage, Doron M. Kalir

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court closed the door on one issue only to open the floodgates to another. While recognizing a constitutional right for same-sex marriage, the Court also legitimized religious objections to such unions, practically inviting complex legal challenges to its doors. In doing so, the Court also called for an "open and searching debate" on the issue. This Article seeks to trigger such debate.

For millennia, objections to same-sex marriage were cast in religious and moral terms. The Jewish Bible ("Old Testament"), conventional wisdom argues, provided three demonstrable proofs of the Bible's abhorrence of same-sex …