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Full-Text Articles in Religion Law
Foreword: New Supreme Court Cases: Duquesne Law Faculty Explains, Wilson Huhn
Foreword: New Supreme Court Cases: Duquesne Law Faculty Explains, Wilson Huhn
Law Faculty Publications
On September 30, 2022, several members of the faculty of the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University presented a Continuing Legal Education program, New Supreme Court Cases: Duquesne Law Faculty Explains, reviewing these developments. Duquesne Law Review graciously invited the faculty panel to contribute their analysis of these cases from the Supreme Court's 2021- 2022 term for inclusion in this symposium issue of the Law Review.
Taking Justification Seriously: Proportionality, Strict Scrutiny, And The Substance Of Religious Liberty, Stephanie H. Barclay, Justin Collings
Taking Justification Seriously: Proportionality, Strict Scrutiny, And The Substance Of Religious Liberty, Stephanie H. Barclay, Justin Collings
Journal Articles
Last term, five Justices on the Supreme Court flirted with the possibility of revisiting the Court’s First Amendment test for when governments must provide an exemption to a religious objector. But Justice Barrett raised an obvious, yet all-important question: If the received test were to be revised, what new test should take its place? The competing interests behind this question have be-come even more acute in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a moment rife with lofty rhetoric about religious liberty but riven by fierce debates about what it means in practice, this Article revisits a fundamental question common to …
Applying Strict Scrutiny: An Empirical Analysis Of Free Exercise Cases, Caleb C. Wolanek, Heidi H. Liu
Applying Strict Scrutiny: An Empirical Analysis Of Free Exercise Cases, Caleb C. Wolanek, Heidi H. Liu
All Faculty Scholarship
Strict scrutiny and the free exercise of religion have had an uneasy relationship in American jurisprudence. In this Article, we trace the history of strict scrutiny in free exercise cases and outline how it applies today. Then, using a unique dataset of cases from a 25-year period, we detail the characteristics of these cases. Finally, we discuss the implications for future cases. Our research indicates that even though claimants currently win a large percentage of cases, those victories might not be durable.
Brief For Catholics For Choice Et Al. As Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents, Zubik V. Burwell, Leslie C. Griffin
Brief For Catholics For Choice Et Al. As Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents, Zubik V. Burwell, Leslie C. Griffin
Supreme Court Briefs
No abstract provided.
Religious Rights In Historical, Theoretical And International Context: Hobby Lobby As A Jurisprudential Anomaly, S. I. Strong
Religious Rights In Historical, Theoretical And International Context: Hobby Lobby As A Jurisprudential Anomaly, S. I. Strong
Faculty Publications
The United States has a long and complicated history concerning religious rights, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., has done little to clear up the jurisprudence in this field. Although the decision will doubtless generate a great deal of commentary as a matter of constitutional and statutory law, the better approach is to consider whether and to what extent the majority and dissenting opinions reflect the fundamental principles of religious liberty. Only in that context can the merits of such a novel decision be evaluated free from political and other biases.
This …
Sacred Cows, Holy Wars: Exploring The Limits Of Law In The Regulation Of Raw Milk And Kosher Meat, Kenneth Lasson
Sacred Cows, Holy Wars: Exploring The Limits Of Law In The Regulation Of Raw Milk And Kosher Meat, Kenneth Lasson
All Faculty Scholarship
In a free society law and religion seldom coincide comfortably, tending instead to reflect the inherent tension that often resides between the two. This is nowhere more apparent than in America, where the underlying principle upon which the first freedom enunciated by the Constitution's Bill of Rights is based ‒ the separation of church and state – is conceptually at odds with the pragmatic compromises that may be reached. But our adherence to the primacy of individual rights and civil liberties ‒ that any activity must be permitted if it is not imposed upon others without their consent, and if …
Institutional Autonomy And Constitutional Structure, Randy J. Kozel
Institutional Autonomy And Constitutional Structure, Randy J. Kozel
Journal Articles
This Review makes two claims. The first is that Paul Horwitz’s excellent book, "First Amendment Institutions," depicts the institutionalist movement in robust and provocative form. The second is that it would be a mistake to assume from its immersion in First Amendment jurisprudence (not to mention its title) that the book's implications are limited to the First Amendment. Professor Horwitz presents First Amendment institutionalism as a wide-ranging theory of constitutional structure whose focus is as much on constraining the authority of political government as it is on facilitating expression. These are the terms on which the book's argument — and, …
The Administrative Origins Of Modern Civil Liberties Law, Jeremy K. Kessler
The Administrative Origins Of Modern Civil Liberties Law, Jeremy K. Kessler
Faculty Scholarship
This Article offers a new explanation for the puzzling origin of modern civil liberties law. Legal scholars have long sought to explain how Progressive lawyers and intellectuals skeptical of individual rights and committed to a strong, activist state came to advocate for robust First Amendment protections after World War I. Most attempts to solve this puzzle focus on the executive branch's suppression of dissent during World War I and the Red Scare. Once Progressives realized that a powerful administrative state risked stifling debate and deliberation within civil society, the story goes, they turned to civil liberties law in order to …
Limiting Principles And Empowering Practices In American Indian Religious Freedoms, Kristen A. Carpenter
Limiting Principles And Empowering Practices In American Indian Religious Freedoms, Kristen A. Carpenter
Publications
Employment Division v. Smith was a watershed moment in First Amendment law, with the Supreme Court holding that neutral statutes of general applicability could not burden the free exercise of religion. Congress's subsequent attempts, including the passage of Religious Freedom Restoration Act and Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, to revive legal protections for religious practice through the legislative and administrative process have received tremendous attention from legal scholars. Lost in this conversation, however, have been the American Indians at the center of the Smith case. Indeed, for them, the decision criminalizing the possession of their peyote sacrament was …
Fundamental Questions About The Religion Clauses: Reflections On Some Critiques, Kent Greenawalt
Fundamental Questions About The Religion Clauses: Reflections On Some Critiques, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
This essay responds to some major critiques of my work on the religion clauses. The effort has seemed worth undertaking because many issues the critics raise lie at the core of one’s approach to free exercise and nonestablishment, and some of those issues matter greatly for constitutional adjudication more broadly. Like any author, perhaps, my reaction to reading some comments has been that I did not quite say that, but I shall not bore you with these quibbles about how well I explained myself in the past. Rather, I shall try to confront the genuinely basic questions that many of …
House Of Wisdom Or A House Of Cards? Why Teaching Islam In U.S. Foreign Detention Facilities Violates The Establishment Clause, Scott Thompson
House Of Wisdom Or A House Of Cards? Why Teaching Islam In U.S. Foreign Detention Facilities Violates The Establishment Clause, Scott Thompson
Publications
In an attempt to erase Islamic-fundamentalist sentiments held by detainees apprehended in the course of the "war on terror," the United States government began teaching and preaching a more moderate version of the Qur'an and Islam to detainees in Iraq. One such detention program in Iraq was dubbed the House of Wisdom. But the wisdom of such a practice is highly suspect--both because it likely runs afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and because it may be doing more harm than good to the American effort to defuse Islamic-extremism and anti-American sentiment. This Article examines the practice …
An Expressive Jurisprudence Of The Establishment Clause, Ivan E. Bodensteiner, Alex Geisinger
An Expressive Jurisprudence Of The Establishment Clause, Ivan E. Bodensteiner, Alex Geisinger
Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
The Demise Of The First Amendment As A Guarantor Of Religious Freedom, Ivan E. Bodensteiner
The Demise Of The First Amendment As A Guarantor Of Religious Freedom, Ivan E. Bodensteiner
Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Assimilation, Toleration, And The State's Interest In The Development Of Religious Doctrine, Richard Garnett
Assimilation, Toleration, And The State's Interest In The Development Of Religious Doctrine, Richard Garnett
Journal Articles
Thirty-five years ago, in the context of a church-property dispute, Justice William Brennan observed that government interpretation of religious doctrine and judicial intervention in religious disputes are undesirable, because when civil courts undertake to resolve [doctrinal] controversies..., the hazards are ever present of inhibiting the free development of religious doctrine and of implicating secular interests in matters of purely ecclesiastical concern. This statement, at first, seems wise and fittingly cautious, even unremarkable and obvious. On examination, though, it turns out to be intriguing, elusive, and misleading. Indeed, Justice Brennan's warning presents hazards of its own, and its premises - if …
Religious Convictions And Lawmaking, Kent Greenawalt
Religious Convictions And Lawmaking, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
In this Article, presented as the 1985-86 Thomas M. Cooley Lectures at the University of Michigan School of Law on March 10-12, 1986, Professor Greenawalt addresses the role that religious conviction properly plays in the liberal citizen's political decisionmaking in a liberal democratic society. Rejecting the notion that all political questions can be decided on rational secular grounds, Professor Greenawalt argues that the liberal democratic citizen may rely on his religious convictions when secular morality is unable to resolve issues critical to a political decision. The examples of animal rights and environmental protection, abortion, and welfare assistance illustrate situations where …