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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Salafism, Wahhabism, And The Definition Of Sunni Islam, Rob J. Williams
Salafism, Wahhabism, And The Definition Of Sunni Islam, Rob J. Williams
Honors Program: Student Scholarship & Creative Works
My capstone deals with the historical definition of Sunni Islam, and how it has changed in approximately the past 200 years. Around 1800, Sunni Islam was pretty clearly defined by an adherence to one of four maddhabs, or schools of law: the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali schools and are all based in nearly a millennium of legal scholarship. Since 1800, however, numerous reform movements have sprung up which disavow previous scholarship and interpret Islamic law their own way. However, certain reformist groups, such as Traditionalist Salafis and Wahhabis, claim that their version of Islam is the only “pure” …
Render Unto Caesar: How Misunderstanding A Century Of Free Exercise Jurisprudence Forged And Then Fractured The Rfra Coalition, John S. Blattner
Render Unto Caesar: How Misunderstanding A Century Of Free Exercise Jurisprudence Forged And Then Fractured The Rfra Coalition, John S. Blattner
CMC Senior Theses
This thesis provides a comprehensive history of Supreme Court Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence from 1879 until the present day. It describes how a jurisdictional approach to free exercise dominated the Court’s rulings from its first Free Exercise Clause case in 1879 until Sherbert v. Verner in 1963, and how Sherbert introduced an accommodationist precedent which was ineffectively, incompletely, and inconsistently defined by the Court. This thesis shows how proponents of accommodationism furthered a false narrative overstating the scope and consistency of Sherbert’s precedent following the Court’s repudiation of accommodationism and return to full jurisdictionalism with Employment Division v. Smith …