Religion Law Commons^™

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 …

Religious Accommodation, The Establishment Clause, And Third-Party Harm, Mark Storslee

Journal Articles

In the wake of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, religious accommodation has become increasingly controversial. That controversy has given rise to a new legal theory gaining popularity among academics and possibly a few Supreme Court justices: the idea that the First Amendment's Establishment Clause condemns accommodations whenever they generate anything beyond a minimal cost for third parties.

The third-party thesis is appealing. But this Article argues that there are good reasons to believe it falls short as an interpretation of the Establishment Clause. In its place, the Article offers a new theory for understanding the relationship between costly accommodations and the …

Accommodation, Establishment, And Freedom Of Religion, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

This short essay engages the argument that it would violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause to exempt an ordinary, nonreligious, profit-seeking business – such as Hobby Lobby – from the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive-coverage rules. In response to this argument, it is emphasized that the First Amendment not only permits but invites generous, religion-specific accommodations and exemptions and that the Court’s Smith decision does not teach otherwise. In addition, this essay proposes that laws and policies that promote and protect religious freedom should be seen as having a “secular purpose” and that because religious freedom, like clean air, is an …

The Political (And Other) Safeguards Of Religious Freedom, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

This essay is a contribution to a symposium marking the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s still-controversial decision in Employment Division v. Smith. That decision, it is suggested, should not be read as reflecting or requiring hostility or indifference towards claims for legislatively enacted accommodations of religion. Smith is not an endorsement of religion-blind neutrality in constitutional law; instead, it assigns to politically accountable actors the difficult, but crucially important, task of accommodating those whose religious exercise would otherwise be burdened by generally applicable laws. The essay goes on to suggest several things that must be true of our law …

Religious Freedom, Church Autonomy, And Constitutionalism, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

Our topic at this symposium is "religion, the state, and constitutionalism"-not "the Constitution," or "the First Amendment," but "constitutionalism." Countless conferences, cases, books, and articles have wrestled with one version or another of the question, "how does our Constitution, with its First Amendment and its religion clauses, promote, protect, or perhaps restrain religion?" We are considering, it seems to me, a question that is different, and that is different in interesting and important ways: What are connections between religion and religious freedom, on the one hand, and constitutionalism, on the other?

Does Free Exercise Of Religion Deserve Constitutional Mention?, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

The article discusses the inclusion of the free exercise of religion among a society's constitutional guarantees in the U.S. It cites Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager, authors of the book "Religious Freedom and the Constitution," who hold that religion does not deserve constitutional mention on account of any special value. It disputes this view and states that religion does deserve constitutional mention and that the constitution should protect a citizen's right to practice his or her religion.

Judicial Enforcement Of The Establishment Clause, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

This paper is the author’s contribution to a roundtable conference, held in October of 2008 at Notre Dame Law School, devoted to Prof. Kent Greenawalt’s book, Religion and the Constitution: Establishment and Fairness. It is suggested that Greenawalt’s admirably context-sensitive approach to church-and-state questions might lead us to think that the best course for judges is to find (somehow) some bright-line, on-off “rules” and “tests”, constructed to identify and forbid the most obvious violations of the Religion Clause’s core (whatever that is), and to give up on -- or, perhaps, “underenforce” -- the rest.

Free To Believe, Richard Garnett

Journal Articles

Richard Garnett reviews Religious Freedom and the Constitution by Christopher L. Eisgruber & Lawrence G. Sager, Harvard University Press, 352 pages, $28.95

Religion And Group Rights: Are Churches (Just) Like The Boy Scouts?, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

What role do religious communities, groups, and associations play - and, what role should they play - in our thinking and conversations about religious freedom and church-state relations? These and related questions - that is, questions about the rights and responsibilities of religious institutions - are timely, difficult, and important. And yet, they are often neglected.

It is not new to observe that American judicial decisions and public conversations about religious freedom tend to focus on matters of individuals' rights, beliefs, consciences, and practices. The special place, role, and freedoms of groups, associations, and institutions are often overlooked. However, if …

Introduction: Religion, Division, And The Constitution, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

Thirty-five years ago, in his landmark Lemon v. Kurtzman opinion, Chief Justice Warren Burger declared that state actions could "excessive[ly]"—and, therefore, unconstitutionally—"entangle" government and religion, not only by requiring or allowing intrusive monitoring by officials of religious institutions and activities, but also through their "divisive political potential." He worried that government actions burdened with this "potential" pose a "threat to the normal political process and "divert attention from the myriad issues and problems that confront every level of government." And, he insisted that "political division along religious lines was one of the principal evils against which the First Amendment was …

Book Review, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

In volume 1, James Hitchcock provides a comprehensive historical treatment of all the U.S. Supreme Court cases involving the religion clauses. Volume 2 focuses on the broader “context of the continuing dialogue about the role of religion in public life” and its relationship to the Court’s interpretation of the religion clauses.

Book Review, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

RELIGION ON TRIAL makes the historical debates about the religion clauses accessible to a broad audience. In addition, it properly links issues of free exercise of religion to issues about fundamental rights in a manner that is usually missed by legal scholars and political scientists. Consequently, this book would be a good addition to undergraduate, graduate, and law school courses on the religion clauses or on law and religion.

Book Review, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

Lucinda Peach addresses the issue of religious lawmaking by focusing on the constitutional implications and gender issues that she argues have been overlooked by the Supreme Court and by participants in the debate about religion in politics.

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 …

Book Review, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

Eric Michael Mazur’s dissertation (supervised by Phillip E. Hammond) argues that minority religious communities have had to “subordinate their distinct theological beliefs to the transcending principles of the majority articulated by the constitutional order, or they are forced to do so by the physical powers of the government” (p. xxv). To support this argument, he takes an empirical approach and focuses on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons), and Native American religious traditions.

From Yoder To Yoda: Traditional, Modern And Postmodern Models Of Religion In U.S. Constitutional Law, Rebecca Redwood French

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Beguiled: Free Exercise Exemptions And The Siren Song Of Liberalism, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

From all the talk about our religious pluralism—how extensive, indelible, inarbitrable it is—one would expect that establishing one definition of religious liberty would be the mother of all civic disturbances. Wrong. We have a common definition of religious liberty. I can demonstrate our agreement with one exhibit: the immensely broad based denunciation of the 1990 Supreme Court decision, Employment Division v. Smith. Two counsellors at a drug rehabilitation center (Alfred Smith and Galen Black) appealed Oregon’s denial of unemployment benefits. Oregon cited the “misconduct” that led to their discharges. Their “misconduct” consisted of using the hallucinogenic drug peyote. Peyote …

Forum Juridicum: Church Autonomy In The Constitutional Order - The End Of Church And State?, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

"Separation of church and state" is right up there with Mom, apple pie, and baseball in American iconography. If everyone agrees on separation of church and state, why does the relationship between religion and public life so vex, excite, and confound us? Part of the reason is that church-state separation, although it is the historical achievement of societies decisively shaped by a Christianity that was itself decisively shaped by Judaism, is a commodious concept.

But "separation of church and state" is not contentless, and our conclusive agreement on it, I submit, provides a valuable common frame of reference in an …

The Last Days Of Erastianism: Forms In The American Church-State Nexus, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

In the long history of Christendom, an Erastian view of the relation between Church and State has existed in tension with a High Church view. This paper explores the current state of our current shopworn Erastian-like church-state nexus and considers what forces may bring a more relevant and effective institutional High Church witness into being. The fact that the United States has an Erastian-like church-state relation is borne out in a line of cases involving the judicial resolution of intra-church disputes and the effect to be given the mandates of ecclesiastical authority. It is also borne out in legislative and …

Federal Aid To Religious Schools - Introductory Note, Joseph O'Meara

Journal Articles

The American people are confronted by a crisis of constitutional interpretation and educational policy, stemming from the Bishops' program for federal aid to parochial schools. As was to be expected, there has been much partisan clamor on both sides of the school-aid question but far too little rational discourse. That deficiency would be corrected if there were wide response to Monsignor Hochwalt's invitation: " . . . we'd like that whole question of whether we should or we shouldn't [receive financial aid from the federal government] and the constitutionality and desirability and all the rest of it to be discussed …

Religious Education And The Historical Method Of Constitution Interpretation - A Review Article, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

Confusion Twice Confounded is sufficiently typical of a growing body of literature to warrant more extensive treatment than is usually accorded in a book review. It analyzes at great length the opinions in the Everson and McCollum cases and criticizes them in the light of the historical background of the First Amendment. Everson, it will be recalled, derived from the Founding Fathers the doctrine that the Constitution required a "wall of separation between church and state," which was not breached by public payment of transportation to and from parochial schools. McCollum used the test laid down in Everson to invalidate …

Church, The State, And Mrs. Mccollum, Clarence Emmett Manion

Journal Articles

On March 8, 1948 the Supreme Court of the United States decided in substance that this language prohibits the tax-supported city school systems of the State of Illinois from assisting and encouraging general religious instruction. Just how a constitutional restriction against specified congressional action can possibly impede the activity of a local Illinois school board is an inglorious mystery of modern constitutional construction.

In one way or another however, and for one reason or many, the Court decided eight to one that when the First Amendment says "Congress" it means, among other things, a local school board and when it …

Excusing Of Public School Pupils For Religious Instruction, Thomas F. Broden

Journal Articles

The separation of Church and State, according to the precepts of the American form of constitutional government, imposes no duty on the public school system to erect a barrier of hostility and antagonism against religion or the churches. Accordingly, a regulation of the Board of Education excusing the weekly absences of pupils for the purpose of receiving religious instruction does not, it was held in People ex rel. Latimer et al. v. Board of Education of City of Chicago, do violence to the compulsory attendance law and is a reasonable rule for the practical administration of the public schools.