Religion Law Commons^™

The Virginia Company To Chick-Fil-A: Christian Business In America, 1600–2000, Joseph P. Slaughter

Seattle University Law Review

This Article argues that the proprietors of what the author terms “Christian Business Enterprises” (CBEs) would strenuously disagree with Justice Ginsburg and assert that their express mission is to earn a profit while propagating their religious values. As such, they operate businesses “infused with religion,” where Christian values are interwoven into the very fabric of the company and how the firm relates to its stakeholders, employees, customers, suppliers, and communities.

This Article further demonstrates the rich heritage of religious for-profit businesses throughout American history by focusing on a series of Protestant CBEs that led to today’s CBE giants: Chick-fil-A and …

Celebrating The Work Of Professor Bob Cochran: An Introduction, Derek T. Muller

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Devotion ̶T̶O̶ And The Rule Of Law: Acknowledging The Role Of Religious Values In Judicial Decision-Making, Priya Purohit

Indiana Law Journal

This Comment advocates for the acknowledgment of religious values in judicial decision-making in three parts. Part I explores the role of religion in American politics, and more specifically, the role of religion in federal judicial confirmation hearings and state-level judicial elections. Membership to an institutionalized religion often performs an essential gatekeeping function when it comes to assessing the background or personal values of a candidate for political or judicial office. The initially positive role of religion in judicial selection processes suggests that the practice of refusing to acknowledge the role that religion likely already plays in judicial decision-making is wholly …

If Separation Of Church And State Doesn’T Demand Separating Religion From Politics, Does Christian Doctrine Require It?, Samuel W. Calhoun

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Essay responds to comments by Wayne Barnes, Ian Huyett, and David Smolin on my prior Article, Separation of Church and State: Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Show It Was Never Intended to Separate Religion From Politics. Part II, although noting a few disagreements with Huyett and Smolin, principally argues that they strengthen the case for the appropriateness of religious arguments in the public square. Part III evaluates Wayne Barnes’s contention that Christian doctrine requires separating religion from politics.

Sex And Religion: Unholy Bedfellows, Mary-Rose Papandrea

Michigan Law Review

A review of Geoffrey R. Stone, Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century.

Conceptions Of Religion In The Secular State: Evolving Turkish Secularism, Seval Yildirim

Pepperdine Law Review

The article focuses on the concepts of religion in secular states such as Republic of Turkey. Topics discussed include distinction between secularism and religion, views of philosopher of liberalism John Locke on delegation of matters of faith to the Church and matters of public good to the state along with the relationship of modernization and secularism.

How Critical Race Theory Marginalizes The African American Christian Tradition, Brandon Paradise

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article offers the first comprehensive account of the marginalization of the African American Christian tradition in the movement of race and law scholarship known as critical race theory. While committed to grounding itself in the perspectives of communities of color, critical race theory has virtually ignored the significance of the fact that the civil rights movement came out of the Black church and that today more than eighty percent of African Americans self-identify as Christian. In practical terms, critical race theory’s neglect of the Christian tradition has meant that arguments developed in race and law scholarship are sometimes incompatible …

Bruce Ledewitz, American Religious Democracy: Coming To Terms With The End Of Secular Politics, Thomas A. Schweitzer

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Mighty Work Of Making Nations Happy: A Response To James Davison Hunter, Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Pepperdine Law Review

This article is an invited response to James Davison Hunter’s much-discussed book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010). Hunter, a sociologist at UVA and a believing Protestant, claims that law’s capacity to contribute to social change is “mostly illusory” and that Christians, therefore, should practice “faithful presence” in the public square rather than seek to influence law directly. My response is that it is, in fact, law’s stunning ability to alter and limit available choices that makes it an object of deservedly fierce contest. The wild …

Faithful Presence And Theological Jurisprudence: A Response To James Davison Hunter , Zachary R. Calo

Pepperdine Law Review

This paper considers how James Hunter’s arguments, presented both in his address and his book To Change the World, might inform the development of a constructive religious legal theory based in the particular resources of Christian theology. In speaking of religious legal theory, I mean something quite different than a theory of law and religion. For some time, the academic conversation about law and religion has centered around issues concerning church-state relations and, more broadly, the place of religion within the liberal political order. Yet, the regnant methodological concerns that have shaped this discourse reflect the boundedness of law to …

The Christian Executioner: Reconciling “An Eye For An Eye” With “Turn The Other Cheek”, Jill Jones

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Higher Law Secularism: Religious Symbols, Contested Secularisms, And The Limits Of The Establishment Clause, Zachary R. Calo

Chicago-Kent Law Review

There are two dominant traditions of understanding the secular, both with long genealogical resonance in western thought: Christian secularity and secularism. The former links the secular to a theological narrative, while the latter defines the secular as standing over and against religion. Constitutional debate has commonly framed the issue of religious symbols as demanding resolution in favor of one of these traditions. Rather than offering a way to overcome the divide and the culture war it generates, the Court's jurisprudence has instead concretized the binary. Only by cultivating a new understanding of the secular in law might there emerge an …

The Wrong Question, John E. Acuff

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Truth Shall Set You Free: A Distinctively Christian Approach To Deception In The Negotiation Process, Al Sturgeon

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This paper examines whether the Christian religion offers a distinct position on the use of deception in the negotiation process. It is expected to be of primary interest to Christian negotiators, but combining the popularly understood theorem that "everyone negotiates on some level" with the fact that there are over 173 million Christian adherents in the United States alone, the topic may be of general interest to anyone who negotiates. There is apparently neither an official nor a widespread recognition of a distinct Christian position on the use of deception in negotiation at present. It is this article's proposal, however, …

Law, Higher Law, And Human Making, William S. Brewbaker Iii

Pepperdine Law Review

This paper is a preliminary investigation of what Christian theology might teach us about the nature of human creative activity and its relationship to judging and lawmaking. Rather than attempt to survey and synthesize multiple theological accounts of human making, it focuses on just one - Dorothy Sayers' The Mind of the Maker. The foundational analogy that drives Sayers' account of human creativity is the relation between God's creative activity and that of human beings made in his image. Sayers argues that human creative activity has a Trinitarian structure, which she identifies as Idea, Energy and Power. These three elements …

Law And Redemption: Political Judgment And The Church's Proclamation , Joan Lockwood O'Donovan

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cain's Law, Elizabeth Mensch

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tango Or More - From California's Lesson 9 To The Constitutionality Of A Gay-Friendly Curriculum In Public Elementary Schools, Amy Lai

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In August 2009, a group of parents in California filed a lawsuit, Balde v. Alameda Unified School District, in the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda. They alleged that the Alameda Unified School District refused them the right to excuse their children from a new curriculum, Lesson 9, that would teach public elementary school children about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) families. The proposed curriculum included short sessions about GLBT people, incorporated into more general lessons about family and health, once a year from kindergarten through fifth grade. Kindergarteners would learn the harms of teasing, while fifth graders …

Is Modern Legal Liberalism Still Compatible With Free Exercise Of Religion?, Donald R. Mcconnell

Campbell Law Review

Classic liberal legal thought has clearly been shaped by the influence of Christianity. But in recent years, the movement, like ancient Gnosticism, has some Christian elements, but has become a decidedly anti-Christian force in the courts. This comparison tracks well with the analysis of other parallel modern intellectual movements by the political scientist Eric Voegelin. It is also supported by current events such as the recent Federal District Court opinion by Chief Judge Vaughn Walker in Perry v. Schwartzenegger. Liberalism has transformed from an attempt at neutrality, to an established religion that not only promotes its own perverse version of …

"Causing The Blood To Flow Where I Touched Him" - Liberalism, Constitutionalism, Christianity, And The "War" At Covey Farm, Anthony V. Baker

Campbell Law Review

I will begin my critique by going directly to the source here, the famous Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787, and ask us to look somewhat carefully at the work of the "founders" there, in considering the ultimate integrity of the product they fashioned and the world they "created." That they gave us a classical liberal wonder, with tenets of that philosophy writ large in government for the very first time, is undeniable, though it will be submitted that they gave us "something else" as well. It is right for us then to explore that "something else," not abstractly, through ideas, …

"Just" Married?: Same-Sex Marriage And A Hustory Of Family Plurality, Judith E. Koons

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

To contribute to a full moral deliberation about same-sex marriage, this Article inquires into the meanings of marriage, sexuality, and family from historical and narrative perspectives that are situated at the intersection of religious and political domains.

Racism As "The Nation's Crucial Sin": Theology And Derrick Bell, George H. Taylor

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Part I develops Bell's thesis that racism is permanent, an ineradicable structure in American life. Bell's stance here is unrelenting and a direct and deep challenge to liberal notions of racial progress. This section draws out the social facts Bell provides about the status of Blacks in American society and examines Bell's argument for the continuing disparity between the races, particularly the claim that Whites hold on to a property in Whiteness. Part II analyzes Bell's call for action despite racism's permanence. Part III develops Niebuhr's theology of the possibility of action despite sin. Niebuhr too criticizes the liberal-and liberal …

Distinctively Christian Perspectives On Legal Thought?, Mark Tushnet

Michigan Law Review

The plural in the title of Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought immediately suggests one problem in reviewing this collection of essays: identifying unifying themes is difficult precisely because there are a variety of Christian perspectives represented here. Christian perspectives include those of Anabaptists and their modern successors such as Mennonites (who regard law as simply irrelevant to their Christianity), those of the nineteenth-century Catholic church (which was hostile to democracy and religious toleration), and those of the modern Catholic church (which endorses religious pluralism and the preferential option for the poor - among many others). What, then, might be distinctive …

The Qualities Of Completeness: More? Or Less?, Mark R. Killenbeck

Michigan Law Review

On January 14, 1983, Chief Judge W. Brevard Hand announced what he knew would be widely regarded as a rather startling proposition. Believing that "[t]he first amendment in large part was a guarantee to the states which insured that the states would be able to continue whatever church-state relationship existed in 1791," Judge Hand held that the people of Alabama were perfectly free to "establish[] a religion," in this instance by allowing public school teachers to begin the school day with prayer. The ruling reversed an earlier decision in the same case, which characterized the statutory provision at issue as …

The Promise Of American Law: A Theological, Humanistic View Of Legal Process, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Promise of American Law: A Theological, Humanistic View of Legal Process by Milner S. Ball

Kauper: Religion And The Constitution, Wilber G. Katz

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Religion and the Constitution. By Paul G. Kauper.

The Establishment Clause And The Ecumenical Movement, Robert C. Casad

Michigan Law Review

In recent years the Roman Catholic Church has begun to give tentative official support to the view that eventual reconciliation with the Protestants is feasible and desirable. The acceptance of the ecumenical ideal by the Roman Catholic Church removes virtually all doubt that in the ecumenical movement organized Christianity is facing an upheaval of major importance, comparable perhaps to the Reformation. It is not likely to lose force after a few years, as so many minor religious movements do. It is definitely under way, gaining momentum year by year. It is bound to have far-reaching effects and give rise to …

Wu: Fountain Of Justice, Thomas E. Davitt S.J.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Fountain of Justice. By John C.H. Wu.

Book Reviews, Nels F.S. Ferre (Reviewer), Seymour W. Wurfel (Reviewer), Lloyd S. Adams (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

Few topics are currently more at the center of both interest and need than that of Dr. Stumpf's new book. The ship of democracy is being tossed by heavy seas. Many are looking for a haven of faith. They tell us that the ship cannot stay afloat unless it reaches the well-protected harbor of religion. It needs at least to be overhauled, they say, and made more seaworthy in that harbor before it braves again the heavy onslaughts which it must necessarily breast. Dr. Stumpf probes too deeply into the relation between democracy and religion, however, to fall prey to …

Constitutional Law-Judcial Powers-State Taxpayer Denied Standing As Party In Interest In Bible Reading Case, Frank M. Bowen, Jr. S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiffs sought a judgment to declare unconstitutional a New Jersey statute which required the reading of five verses of the Old Testament at the opening of each day in the public schools. Plaintiffs contended that the practice under the statute was an "establishment of religion" prohibited by the First Amendment and applicable to the several states through the "due process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment Both plaintiffs were taxpayers of New Jersey, and one was also the parent of a child who had attended a public school, but had left school before the appeal was taken. The Supreme Court of …