Religion Law Commons^™

Forgotten Federal-Missionary Partnerships: New Light On The Establishment Clause, Nathan Chapman

Scholarly Works

Americans have long disputed whether the government may support religious instruction as part of an elementary education. Since Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Supreme Court has gradually articulated a doctrine that permits states to provide funds, indirectly through vouchers and in some cases directly through grants, to religious schools for the nonreligious goods they provide. Unlike most other areas of Establishment Clause jurisprudence, however, the Court has not built this doctrine on a historical foundation. In fact, in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer (2017), the dissenters from this doctrine were the ones to rely on the founding-era record.

Intriguingly, …

Religion And Social Coherentism, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Today, prominent academics are questioning the very possibility of a theory of free exercise or non-establishment. They argue that judgments in the area can only be conclusory or irrational. In contrast to such skeptics, this Essay argues that decisionmaking on questions of religious freedom can be morally justified. Two arguments constitute the Essay. Part I begins by acknowledging that skepticism has power. The skeptics rightly identify some inevitable indeterminacy, but they mistakenly argue that it necessarily signals decisionmaking that is irrational or unjustified. Their critique is especially striking because the skeptics’ prudential way of working on concrete problems actually shares …

The End Of Religious Freedom: What Is At Stake?, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In recent work, Steven Smith argues that the American tradition of religious freedom is newly imperiled and may even be nearing exhaustion. This Review puts to one side the substance of that argument and focuses instead on what the stakes might be, should it turn out to be correct. It concludes that the consequences would not be as severe as many people fear.

Government Nonendorsement, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

What are the constitutional limits on government endorsement? Judges and scholars typically assume that when the government speaks on its own account, it faces few restrictions. In fact, they often say that the only real restriction on government speech is the Establishment Clause. On this view, officials cannot endorse, say, Christianity, but otherwise they enjoy wide latitude to promote democracy or denigrate smoking. Two doctrines and their accompanying literatures have fed this impression. First, the Court’s recent free speech cases have suggested that government speech is virtually unfettered. Second, experts on religious freedom have long assumed that there is no …

With Religious Liberty For All: A Defense Of The Affordable Care Act's Contraception Coverage Mandate, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

The “contraception mandate” of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 poses a straightforward question for religious liberty jurisprudence: Must government excuse a believer from complying with a religiously burdensome law, when doing so would violate the liberty of others by imposing on them the costs and consequences of religious beliefs that they do not share? To ask this question is to answer it: One's religious liberty does not include the right to interfere with the liberty of others, and thus religious liberty may not be used by a religious employer to force employees to pay the costs …

Smith In Theory And Practice, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Employment Division v. Smith controversially held that general laws that were neutral toward religion would no longer be presumptively invalid, regardless of how much they incidentally burdened religious practices. That decision sparked a debate that continues today, twenty years later. This symposium Essay explores the argument that subsequent courts have in fact been less constrained by the principal rule of Smith than advocates on both sides of the controversy usually assume. Lower courts administering real world disputes often find they have all the room they need to grant relief from general laws, given exceptions written into the decision itself and …

Religious And Political Virtues And Values In Congruence Or Conflict?: On Smith, Bob Jones University, And Christian Legal Society, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

A basic tension in the U.S. constitutional and political order exists between two important ideas about the relationship between civil society and the state: (1) families, religious institutions, voluntary associations, and other groups are foundational sources, or “seedbeds,” of virtues and values that undergird constitutional democracy, and (2) these same institutions guard against governmental orthodoxy and overweening governmental power by generating their own distinctive virtues and values and by being independent locations of power and authority. The first idea envisions a comfortable congruence between civil society and government: the values and virtues - and habits and skills - cultivated in …

Condemning Religion: Rluipa And The Politics Of Eminent Domain, Christopher Serkin, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Should religious landowners enjoy special protection from eminent domain? A recent federal statute, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), compels courts to apply a compelling interest test to zoning and landmarking regulations that substantially burden religiously owned property. That provision has been controversial in itself, but today a new cutting-edge issue is emerging: whether the Act’s extraordinary protection should extend to condemnation as well. The matter has taken on added significance in the wake of Kelo, where the Supreme Court reaffirmed its expansive view of the eminent domain power. In this Article, we argue that RLUIPA should …

Privatizing And Publicizing Speech, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When and how should governments be permitted to use private-law mechanisms to manage their public-law obligations? This short piece poses that question in the context of Summum, which the Supreme Court decided earlier this year, and Buono, which it will hear in the fall. In both cases, the government manipulated formal property rules in order to fend off constitutional challenges. In Summum, the government took ownership of a religious symbol in the face of a free speech challenge, while in Buono it shed ownership of land containing another sectarian symbol in an effort to moot an Establishment Clause problem. Although …

Excluding Religion, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article considers whether government may single out religious actors and entities for exclusion from its support programs. The problem of selective exclusion has recently sparked interest in lower courts and in informal discussions among scholars, but the literature has not kept pace. Excluding Religion argues that government generally ought to be able to select religious actors and entities for omission from support without offending the Constitution. At the same time, the Article carefully circumscribes that power by delineating several limits. It concludes by drawing out some implications for the question of whether and how a constitutional democracy ought to …