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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Legal History
American Religious Liberty Without (Much) Theory: A Review Of Religion And The American Constitutional Experiment, 5th Edition, Nathan S. Chapman
American Religious Liberty Without (Much) Theory: A Review Of Religion And The American Constitutional Experiment, 5th Edition, Nathan S. Chapman
Scholarly Works
Book review of Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment, 5th ed. By John Witte Jr., Joel A. Nichols, and Richard W. Garnett. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 464. $150.00 (cloth); $39.95 (paper); $26.99 (digital). ISBN: 9780197587614.
Islam In The Mind Of American State Courts: 1960 To 2001, Marie Failinger
Islam In The Mind Of American State Courts: 1960 To 2001, Marie Failinger
Faculty Scholarship
This project reviews how American state courts portrayed Islam and Muslims from 1960 until September 11, 2001. The purpose of this project is not to construct some overarching theoretical framework to explain American social and legal views of Islam and Muslims, though I will necessarily interpret what the cases say to some extent. Given the lengthy time period involved, the number of cases in which Muslims or Islam are referenced, and the fact that these cases come from many states, it seemed prudent to defer to others who have constructed critiques of the way American law as a whole has …
Social Contract Neutrality And The Religion Clauses Of The Federal Constitution, Gregory S. Sergienko
Social Contract Neutrality And The Religion Clauses Of The Federal Constitution, Gregory S. Sergienko
Greg Sergienko
'Neutrality' has become the slogan that the Supreme Court uses for judging all claims of freedom of religion whether under the Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause. However, the word 'neutrality' conceals the Court's inconsistent use of the concept. Thus, in Rosenberger v. Rectors of the University of Virginia, the recent debate about funding for religious publications, both the majority and the dissent asserted that only their approach was truly neutral. This inconsistency in the meaning of neutrality in the religion clauses is merely part of a general inconsistency in the Court's treatment of the religion clauses. Some of …
Free Exercise For Whom? -- Could The Religious Liberty Principle That Catholics Established In Perez V. Sharp Also Protect Same-Sex Couples' Right To Marry?, Eric Alan Isaacson
Free Exercise For Whom? -- Could The Religious Liberty Principle That Catholics Established In Perez V. Sharp Also Protect Same-Sex Couples' Right To Marry?, Eric Alan Isaacson
Eric Alan Isaacson
Recent discussions about the threat that same-sex couples hypothetically pose to the religious freedom of Americans whose religions traditions frown upon same-sex unions have largely overlooked the possibility that same-sex couples might have their own religious-liberty interest in being able to marry. The General Synod of the United Church of Christ brought the issue to the fore with an April 2014 lawsuit challenging North Carolina laws barring same-sex marriages. Authored by a lawyer who represented the California Council of Churches and other religions organizations as amici curiae in recent marriage-equality litigation, this article argues that although marriage is a secular …
Religious Liberty That Almost Wasn't: On The Origin Of The Establishment Clause Of The First Amendment, Gregory C. Downs
Religious Liberty That Almost Wasn't: On The Origin Of The Establishment Clause Of The First Amendment, Gregory C. Downs
University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review
The purpose of this article is to briefly examine the origin of the Establishment Clause in the event sometimes referred to as the "Virginia Experience," and to consider the possibility that the significant "leading roles" in the First Amendment's creation were not limited to Jefferson and Madison. Further, Madison's leading role in the actual sponsorship of the First Amendment may not have been entirely voluntary. With the ever-present litigation and controversies revolving around the extent and meaning of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, the overlooked history of the creation of the First Amendment is both interesting and instructive in the …
The Equal Protection Of Free Exercise: Two Approaches And Their History, Bernadette Meyler
The Equal Protection Of Free Exercise: Two Approaches And Their History, Bernadette Meyler
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Contrary to critics of the Supreme Court's current equal protection approach to religious liberty, this Article contends that, from the very first federal free exercise cases, the Equal Protection and Free Exercise Clauses have been mutually intertwined. The seeds of an equal protection analysis of free exercise were, indeed, planted even before the Fourteenth Amendment within the constitutional jurisprudence of the several states. Furthermore, this Article argues, equal protection approaches should not be uniformly disparaged. Rather, the drawbacks that commentators have observed result largely from the Supreme Court's application of an inadequate version of equal protection. By ignoring the lessons …
Passage Of Religious Freedom Act Necessary To Fulfill Maryland's National Leadership Role, Kenneth Lasson
Passage Of Religious Freedom Act Necessary To Fulfill Maryland's National Leadership Role, Kenneth Lasson
All Faculty Scholarship
Three hundred sixty-four years ago this month, two tiny sailing ships arrived near what is now St. Mary's City with the first settlers in Maryland. The Ark and the Dove were sent to the New World by Cecil Calvert. Lord Baltimore had founded his small colony as a haven for those persecuted in England because of their religious beliefs.
On numerous occasions since then - from passage of the Act of Toleration in 1649 to the achievement of full civil liberties for Jews in 1825 to landmark Supreme Court decisions involving the state in the 1960s - Maryland has been …
Equality And Diversity: The Eighteenth-Century Debate About Equal Protection And Equal Civil Rights, Philip A. Hamburger
Equality And Diversity: The Eighteenth-Century Debate About Equal Protection And Equal Civil Rights, Philip A. Hamburger
Faculty Scholarship
Living, as we do, in a world in which our discussions of equality often lead back to the desegregation decisions, to the Fourteenth Amendment, and to the antislavery debates of the 1830s, we tend to allow those momentous events to dominate our understanding of the ideas of equal protection and equal civil rights. Indeed, historians have frequently asserted that the idea of equal protection first developed in the 1830s in discussions of slavery and that it otherwise had little history prior to its adoption into the U.S. Constitution. Long before the Fourteenth Amendment, however – long before even the 1830s …