Religion Law Commons^™

Reclaiming Establishment: Identity And The ‘Religious Equality Problem’, Faraz Sanei

Faculty Scholarship

Since at least 2017, the Court has implicitly recognized a right of equal access to generally available public benefits based on the beneficiary's religious identity or status. In Carson v. Makin (2022), the Court went a step further and, for the first time, concluded that the “status-use distinction lacks a meaningful application” in both theory and practice. It then held that restrictions on the use of public benefits for sacral purposes amount to religious discrimination because they impose substantial burdens on free exercise rights. Carson's holding, and the rationale underlying it, contravene settled case law and effectively gut the Establishment …

Collaborative Constructions: Designing High School History Curriculum With The Lost & Found Game Series, Owen Gottlieb, Shawn Clybor

Articles

This chapter addresses design research and iterative curriculum design for the Lost & Found games series. The Lost & Found card-to-mobile series is set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the twelfth century and focuses on religious laws of the period. The first two games focus on Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, a key Jewish law code. A new expansion module which was in development at the time of the fieldwork described in this article that introduces Islamic laws of the period, and a mobile prototype of the initial strategy game has been developed with support National Endowment for the Humanities. The …

Parading The Horribles: The Risks Of Expanding Religious Exemptions, Law, Rights, And Religion Project

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

People of faith now have a constitutional right to practice their religion—even when doing so conflicts with a government law or policy — that is more rigorously protected than nearly any other right. Some states have passed bills that provide an even broader right to such “religious exemptions” from the law than provided under the U.S. Constitution. Other religious exemption bills have been introduced and await consideration.

Sovereign Imaginaries: Visualizing The Sacred Foundation Of Law’S Authority, Richard K. Sherwin

Articles & Chapters

If a world is to be lived in, it must be founded. This foundational function belongs to the sovereign imagination. What a polity names as sovereign in the state of exception, when the sacred irrupts anew, is a matter of individual and collective responsibility. In this dispensation, law, politics, and religion become inescapably entangled in metaphysics. It behooves us to understand the nature and consequences of this state of affairs.

A Religious Right To Abortion: Legal History And Analysis, Law, Rights, And Religion Project

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

There is a long and rich history of religious support, across a wide range of faith traditions, for the right to reproductive autonomy, including abortion. A number of religious denominations, including the Presbyterian Church, Reform and Conservative Judaism, the United Church of Christ, and the Unitarian Universalist Association, support a legal right to abortion in most or all circumstances. Several religious denominations have even — long before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — issued statements explaining that the right to reproductive health care is an essential aspect of their members’ religious …

Recommendations For Strengthening The Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia's Management Of Non-Hazardous Solid Waste Informed By A Comparative Assessment Of The Management Of Non-Hazardous Solid Waste In The United Arab Emirates, Saud Hani Arab

Dissertations & Theses

Despite significant changes in the category and volume of waste, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) still manages refuse the same way it did decades ago. Before 1975, waste generators were responsible for collecting and disposing of nonhazardous solid waste (NSW). The KSA later set up the Ministry of Municipalities and Rural Affairs (MOMRA) in 1975 as a result of the oil boom. One of the initial tasks of MOMRA was to manage and develop NSW system. In addition to management, MOMRA also distributed waste bins throughout the KSA and hired waste haulers to be responsible for NSW. As I …

What Did Those Sixteen Justices Say?, Leslie C. Griffin

Scholarly Works

Everyone is finally noticing that the current Supreme Court is changing its jurisprudence on religious freedom. The commentators are finally paying more attention to the fact that seven of the Court's current Justices were raised Catholic. What role have Catholics played in the Supreme Court's history? This article traces their contributions on religious freedom and civil rights, starting with Chief Justice Taney and ending with Justice Barrett.

Back To The Sources? What’S Clear And Not So Clear About The Original Intent Of The First Amendment, John Witte Jr.

Faculty Articles

This Article peels through these layers of founding documents before exploring the final sixteen words of the First Amendment religion clauses. Part I explores the founding generation’s main teachings on religious freedom, identifying the major principles that they held in common. Part II sets out a few representative state constitutional provisions on religious freedom created from 1776 to 1784. Part III reviews briefly the actions by the Continental Congress on religion and religious freedom issued between 1774 and 1789. Part IV touches on the deprecated place of religious freedom in the drafting of the 1787 United States Constitution. Part V …

Antidiscrimination And Tax Exemption, Alex Zhang

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court held, in Bob Jones University v. United States, that violations of fundamental public policy— including race discrimination in education—disqualify an entity for tax exemption. The holding of the case was broad, and its results cohered with the ideals of progressive society: the government ought not to subsidize discrimination, particularly of marginalized groups. But almost four decades later, the decision has never realized its antidiscriminatory potential. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has limited implementation to the narrowest facts of the case. The scholarly literature has not formulated a systematic account of how to enforce the Bob Jones …

The Supreme Court’S Hands-Off Approach To Religious Questions In The Era Of Covid-19 And Beyond, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Religion, Public Law, And The Refuge Of Formalism, Howard Kislowicz, Benjamin Berger

All Papers

In this article we suggest that the encounter with religious legal traditions has surfaced a distinct vein of formalism in Canadian public law, discernable across the Court’s law and religion jurisprudence. This is so despite the centrality of substantive analysis in the account Canadian public law gives of itself. But there are distinct challenges and a particular anxiety that surrounds the law-religion encounter; we argue that the fraught sovereignty and pluralism problems that this encounter presents has led Canadian public law to rediscover its formalist habits and the comfort that they bring.

The Supreme Court of Canada’s decisions in Wall …

The Construction Of Minorities: Self-Determination And The Legal Politics Of Religious Difference In Late Northern Nigeria, Circa 1949-1960, Rabiat Akande

All Papers

No abstract provided.

Las Medidas De “Acomodación” De La Religión En El Derecho Estadounidense [Accommodation Of Religion In U.S. Law], Michael W. Mcconnell, Nathan Chapman

Scholarly Works

En este trabajo se analizan las medidas de acomodación de la religión, que gozan de una gran tradición en el derecho constitucional de los Estados Unidos, así como los debates que han generado desde el punto de vista de su conformidad con las cláusulas de la Primera Enmienda de la Constitución de los Estados Unidos: la cláusula de no establecimiento de una religión oficial y la cláusula de libre ejercicio de la religión. A lo largo del trabajo se analiza la principal jurisprudencia recaída sobre las medidas de acomodación y los test que se han construido para enjuiciarlas.

[This paper …

Muslims In Prison: Advancing The Rule Of Law Through Litigation Praxis, Spearit

Articles

Islamic ideas about justice and equality directly informed the development of prison law jurisprudence in the United States. Since the early 1960s, when federal courts began to hear claims by state prisoner-petitioners, Muslims began to look to courts to establish Islam in prison and inaugurated an ongoing campaign for civil rights. The trend is significant when considering Muslims represent a relatively small percentage of the American population. Decades of persistent litigation by Muslims in courts have been integral to developing the prisoners’ rights movement in America. The Muslim impact on prison law and culture is an underappreciated phenomenon that involves …

Salt, Smurthwaite, And Smith: The Origins Of The Modern Legal Identity Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

In 2019 there existed a legal entity known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This fact will likely strike most readers as unexceptional. More interesting, however, prior to 2019 there had been no such legal entity as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for over 150 years, the last of that name likely having been disincorporated in 1862. Even more strangely, although there were millions of people around the globe who identified themselves as Latter-day Saints, in 2019 the only member of the legal entity known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints …

Natural Law And Universal Human Rights, David F. Forte

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Abdullahi An-Na'im has set his life's quest on attempting to find a way that Muslim society can be attuned to the moral commands of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a Western creation. At present, the Shari'a and the Declaration are in obvious tension, if not conflict, in areas such as freedom of religion and the rights of women. An-Na'im finds that the Shari 'a is a creation of man derived in history from an interpretation of Islamic sources. Muslims today can legitimately develop their own interpretation relying on the root sources of Islam, but only so long as those …

Reflections/Lovingkindness, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Dilemma Of Liberal Pluralism, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Supporters of reproductive rights and of queer rights may sometimes live in harmony with advocates for religious exemptions. But sometimes these goals conflict. This Article explores this tension as a matter of liberal democratic theory and U.S. constitutional law, offering a case for seeing a robust pluralism as contained within a proper understanding of the liberal democratic state. The state’s claimed authority may be the starting point, but just as the modern state was born in decentralized religious toleration, so should the modern state accommodate religious and other views of the good that compete with the state’s own views. The …

Covid-19, Churches, And Culture Wars, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

The First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause often requires courts to balance competing interests of the highest order. On the one hand, the Constitution recognizes the free exercise of religion as a fundamental right. On the other hand, the government sometimes has compelling reasons for limiting free exercise, especially in situations involving dangers to health and safety. The shutdown and social distancing orders issued during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic not only restricted free exercise but also limited what many people consider to be the core of that exercise: religious worship. But the orders did so in order to …

‘Nothing About Us Without Us’: Toward A Liberatory Heterodox Halakha, Laynie Laynie Soloman, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

The role and function of “halakha” (Jewish law) in Jewish communal life is a divisive issue: while Orthodox Jews tend to embrace Jewish law, non-Orthodox Jews (here deemed “Heterodox”) generally reject Jewish law and halakhic discourse. We will explore the way in which Robert Cover’s work offers an antidote to categorical Heterodox distaste for halakha specifically, and law more broadly, providing a pathway into an articulation of halakha that may speak to Heterodox Jews specifically: one that is driven by creative “jurisgenerative” potential, that is informed by a paideic pluralism, and that is fundamentally democratic in its commitment to being …

Does U.S. Federal Employment Law Now Cover Caste Discrimination Based On Untouchability?: If All Else Fails There Is The Possible Application Of Bostock V. Clayton County, Kevin D. Brown, Lalit Khandare, Annapurna Waughray, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Theodore M. Shaw

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article discusses the issue of whether a victim of caste discrimination based on untouchability can assert a claim of intentional employment discrimination under Title VII or Section 1981. This article contends that there are legitimate arguments that this form of discrimination is a form of religious discrimination under Title VII. The question of whether caste discrimination is a form of race or national origin discrimination under Title VII or Section 1981 depends upon how the courts apply these definitions to caste discrimination based on untouchability. There are legitimate arguments that this form of discrimination is recognized within the concept …

The Legal Origins Of Catholic Conscientious Objection, Jeremy K. Kessler

Faculty Scholarship

This Article traces the origins of Catholic conscientious objection as a theory and practice of American constitutionalism. It argues that Catholic conscientious objection emerged during the 1960s from a confluence of left-wing and right-wing Catholic efforts to participate in American democratic culture more fully. The refusal of the American government to allow legitimate Catholic conscientious objection to the Vietnam War became a cause célèbre for clerical and lay leaders and provided a blueprint for Catholic legal critiques of other forms of federal regulation in the late 1960s and early 1970s — most especially regulations concerning the provision of contraception and …

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 …