Religion Law Commons^™

The Iceberg Of Religious Freedom: Subsurface Levels Of Nonestablishment Discourse, Steven Douglas Smith

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

This article discusses three levels of disagreement in establishment clause discourse– or what may be called the “lawyerly,” the “constitutive” (or “culture wars”), and the “philosophical” (or perhaps the “theological”) levels. Disagreement at the first of these levels is everywhere apparent in the way lawyers and justices and scholars write and argue; disagreement at the second level is somewhat less obtrusive but still easily discernible; disagreement at the third level is almost wholly beneath the surface. The manifest indeterminacy of lawyerly arguments suggests that in this area, premises are more likely to be derived from favored conclusions, not the other …

The Pluralistic Foundations Of The Religion Clauses, Steven H. Shiffrin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Contemporary Supreme Court interpretations suggest that the religion clauses are primarily rooted in the value of equality. The United States Supreme Court has argued that in the absence of discrimination against religion (or the presence of other constitutional values), there is no violation of the Free Exercise Clause when a statute inadvertently burdens religion. Similarly, equality values have played a strong role in the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence. Many distinguished commentators have pointed to the equality focus and have argued that it gives insufficient attention to the value of religious liberty. Professor Shiffrin argues that these commentators are right in …

The Death Penalty As Delineated By The Old Testament: From Adam And Eve To Cain And Abel To Noah And The Flood To Abraham And Sodom To Moses And The Ten Commandments, Biblical Passages Trace The Roots For How Modern Society Deals With The Execution Of Killers, Robert Blecker

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Religion And Law Use: Constraints On Local Boards' Decision Making, John R. Nolon, Jessica A. Bacher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

While local legislatures generally have broad authority to enact land use regulations that serve a public interest, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act as well as constitutional limits found in the First Amendment limit religious land use regulations that seek to restrict religious freedom. This article explores the Second Circuit’s decision in Westchester Day School v. Village of Mamaroneck, and makes suggestions about the future implications of the court’s decision.

Religious Liberty In America And Beyond: Celebrating The Legacy Of Roger Williams On The 400th Anniversary Of His Birth, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Handling The Truth, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Competing Visions Of The Corporation In Catholic Social Thought, Mark A. Sargent

Working Paper Series

Catholic Social Thought (CST) is coherent body of principles concerning the organization of social and economic life drawing on the inspiration of natural law, Thomism, the Gospel and the tradition of Christian personalism. While valuing the creative energy of capitalism and its contributions to the production of wealth, it is often highly critical of the inequalities generated by capitalism, its tendency to promote materialistic consumerism and capital's devaluation of the dignity of work. While not easily characterizable as "right" or "left", CST thinking about corporate social responsibility and corporate governance has become split between interpretations emphasizing the importance of economic …

The Death Penalty And Due Process In Biblical Law, Richard H. Hiers

UF Law Faculty Publications

The first part of this article reviews biblical texts that have been (or could plausibly be) read as condemning or repudiating capital punishment. The next, and necessarily more detailed and extensive part, discusses the many texts that explicitly call for, or illustrate application of the death penalty. This section also describes the different prescribed methods for executing offenders, identifies the persons assigned responsibility for carrying out executions, and examines biblical rationales for capital punishment A third part describes a variety of biblical provisions that, using modern legal terminology, may be said to afford certain due process procedures and protections. The …

Another Of Roger William's Gifts: Women's Right To Liberty Of Conscience: Joshua Verin V. Providence Plantations, Edward J. Eberle

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Watch, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Professor Oh briefly describes Locke v. Davey in which the U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2003-04 term, attempted to clarify its First Amendment jurisprudence on the religion clauses. In a 7-2 decision, the Court held that the State of Washington did not violate the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause by denying government financial aid to college students seeking to pursue a course of study in religious devotional studies.

Nonestablishment Under God? The Nonsectarian Principle, Steven Douglas Smith

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

Using as a point of reference the Ninth Circuit's assertion in Newdow v. United States Congress that "[a] profession that we are a nation "under God" is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation "under Jesus," a nation "under Vishnu," a nation "under Zeus," or a nation "under no god," this essay attempts to disentangle three themes that the modern discourse of religious freedom often conflates, with baneful effect. We can call these the "public secularism" principle, the "neutrality" principle, and the "nonsectarian principle." The essay argues that the first two of these principles …

The Pluralist Predicament: Contemporary Theorizing In The Law Of Religious Freedom, Steven Douglas Smith

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

Religious pluralism is at once the cause of and a substantial impediment to theorizing about religious freedom. The purpose of theorizing in law is typically to impose order on an unruly collection of phenomena - of seemingly conflicting decisions, or doctrines, or legal arguments - and to do so by articulating and elaborating the foundational truths that govern the subject in question. In a condition of religious pluralism, however, theorists typically suppose that it is impermissible to appeal to contested religious beliefs. But these are the very beliefs that would provide the natural foundations for thinking about the proper relation …

International Law And Religion In Latin America: The Beagle Channel Dispute, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

In 1978, an Argentine diplomat proposed a method of defusing a territorial dispute that very nearly sparked off a war between Argentina and Chile, It,was an offer calculated to be rejected by Chile, and yet Chile’s immediate response was “Agreed” - a response so unthinkable to Argentina that within hours its military Junta revoked the power of the Foreign Minister and the President to sign the agreement it had just proposed. In December 1978, the countries were quickly moving towards a war that, if waged, would most likely have engulfed much of Latin America. The Vatican, however, intervened and brought …

Searching For The Soul Of Judicial Decisionmaking: An Empirical Study Of Religious Freedom Decisions, Gregory C. Sisk, Michael Heise, Andrew P. Morriss

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

During the past half century, constitutional theories of religious freedom have been in a state of great controversy, perpetual transformation, and consequent uncertainty. Given the vitality of religious faith for most Americans and the vigor of the enduring debate on the proper role of religious belief and practice in public society, a searching exploration of the influences upon judges in making decisions that uphold or reject claims implicating religious freedom is long overdue. Many thoughtful contributions have been to the debate about whether judges should allow their religious beliefs to surface in the exercise of their judicial role. Yet much …

Of Government Funding, Religious Institutions, And Neutrality: Seeing The Charitable-Choice Debate Through The Lens Of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, Christopher C. Lund

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

When The Right To Health And The Right To Religion Conflict: A Human Rights Analysis, Lesley Stone, Lance Gable, Tara Gingerich

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

A Prisoner's Right To Religious Diet Beyond The Free Exercise Clause, 51 Ucla L. Rev. 1151 (2004), Benjamin Liu

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Are religious prisoners entitled to dietary accommodations consistent with their religious beliefs? The current answer for this question derives from two 1987 cases, Turner v. Safley and O'Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, in which the U.S. Supreme Court articulated a factor-driven balancing test. Under this test, a prison regulation may burden an inmate's rights only if, on balance, the regulation reasonably serves a penological interest. However, the application of the Turner test often leads to conflicting results in the lower courts. The conflicting legal decisions stem from ambiguities in the concept of "reasonableness." In this Comment, I argue that the …

Davey And The Limits Of Equality, Laura S. Underkuffler

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pilgrimage Or Exodus?: Responding To Faculty Faith Diversity At Religious Law Schools, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

Religiously affiliated law schools have, for the most part, given little thought to the integration of faculty members who are from faith communities other than their own. The article will consider the question of how religiously affiliated law schools truly include faculty members of all religious faiths in the development of mission and community in such law schools, using the lens of the religious metaphors of pilgrimage and Exodus. After presenting this typology for critiquing law school practices, the author deconstructs the very premises of the question through the metaphors of pilgrimage and Exodus. The author argues that a proper …

Dissent And Disestablishment: The Church/State Settlement Of The New American Republic, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This paper has two aims. They are more in the nature of history than law. The first aim is to show that since the fourth century Western civilization has presupposed that there are not one but two sovereigns. Each has a jurisdiction of legitimate operation, and while there are areas of shared cognizance, there are other subject matter areas in which each is noncompetent to perform the tasks of the other. The second aim of this paper is to uncover historical figures that advanced a proposition concerning religious freedom that became the American church-state settlement.

Suburban Sprawl, Jewish Law, And Jewish Values, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

In the second half of the twentieth century, America's cities and suburbs were engulfed by suburban sprawl - the movement of people (especially middle-class families) and jobs from older urban cores to newer, less densely populated, more automobile-dependent communities generally referred to as suburbs. Cities throughout America lost population to their outlying suburbs, and cities that gained population usually did so only because they were able to annex those suburbs. America's suburban revolution has not left Jewish communities unscathed. For example, the city of Newark, New Jersey, contained 58,000 Jews and thirty-four synagogues in the 1940s, but today has only …

Clergy, Sex, And The American Way, Raymond C. O'Brien

Scholarly Articles

Part I of the Article discusses the two hundred year history of the Roman Catholic Church in America. Internationally the Church has over a billion members, but the American Church has distinctive characteristics that have allowed it to prosper and serve as a model for other nations.

Growth, involvement, wealth, and a nexus between being American and being Catholic evidenced by cooperation with civil authorities are among the characteristics. The Charter is now a marker in that history. Part II examines what happened to bring about the crisis of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy. In spite of the …

Collective Guilt And Collective Punishment, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Attitudes toward collective guilt in the Middle East require us to take a closer look at guilt in the Bible. It turns out the text of Genesis is conflicted. Some passages support a theory of guilt linked with the inevitability of cleansing and punishment; other passages appear to treat guilt as a psychological state that might be cured by a confession of sins. The tension is important today in trying to understand whether the collective guilt of nations should also entail collective punishment.

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

Articles

The Article probes a paradox that lies at the heart of the work of critical race scholar Derrick Bell. Bell claims on the one hand that racism is permanent, and yet on the other he argues that the fight against racism is both necessary and meaningful. Although Bell's thesis of racism's permanence has been criticized for rendering action for racial justice unavailing, the Article advances an understanding of Bell that supports and defends the integrity of his paradox. The Article draws upon the work of Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and Niebuhr's paradox that social action is both necessary and meaningful …

Two Wrongs Make A Right: Hybrid Claims Of Discrimination, Ming Hsu Chen

Publications

This Note reinterprets and recontextualizes the pronouncement in Employment Division v. Smith (Smith II) that exemptions from generally applicable laws will not be granted unless claims of free exercise are accompanied by the assertion of another constitutional right. It argues that when Arab American Muslims, and others who are of minority race and religion, bring claims for exemption from generally applicable laws on the basis of free exercise and equal protection principles, they ought to be able to invoke Smith II's hybridity exception, thus meriting heightened judicial scrutiny and increased solicitude from courts.

The Case Of The Missing Discipline: Finding Buddhist Legal Studies, Rebecca Redwood French

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Training For Justice: The Global Reach Of Clinical Legal Education, Richard J. Wilson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Punishment, Guilt, And Shame In Biblical Thought, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The centrality of guilt in the criminal law provides puzzling perspective in the perennial debate on the nature and purpose of punishment. Why is it that all legal systems use this highly charged moral term to refer to an essential component of liability to punishment? This question is not easily answered. The reliance on the concept of guilt in the criminal law is suffused with paradox and mystery.

The Supreme Court And Pledge Of Allegiance: Does God Still Have A Place In American Schools?, Charles J. Russo

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

The dearth of statistical or anecdotal evidence aside, combined with the relative lack of reported litigation, it appears that most students and teachers regularly participate in perhaps the most common daily school ritual by joining in the patriotic recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance (Pledge) and the salute to the American Flag. Yet, as discussed throughout this article, this daily practice has had a history of controversy, whether in schools or political settings.

Turning specifically to schools, in Newdow v. United States Congress (Newdow), the Ninth Circuit set off a firestorm of controversy when, in a case from California, it …

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.