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Full-Text Articles in Religion Law
Neuroscience And The Free Exercise Of Religion, Steven Goldberg
Neuroscience And The Free Exercise Of Religion, Steven Goldberg
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Recent developments in neuroscience that purport to reduce religious experience to specific parts of the brain will not diminish the fundamental cultural or legal standing of religion. William James debunked this possibility in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) when he noted that “the organic causation of a religious state of mind” no more refutes religion than the argument that scientific theories are so caused refutes science. But there will be incremental legal change in areas like civil commitment where judges must sometimes distinguish between mental disorder and religious belief. The paradox is that the ecstatic religious experience of unorthodox …
Defending A Rule Of Institutional Autonomy On "No-Harm" Grounds, Mark V. Tushnet
Defending A Rule Of Institutional Autonomy On "No-Harm" Grounds, Mark V. Tushnet
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The argument I sketch here for institutional autonomy is basically empirical and agrees with Professor Hamilton in making harm-reduction the overriding social goal. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, I suggest that autonomous institutions may be able to socialize their adherents more effectively than institutions that lack autonomy and that - if the institutions' values are compatible with the legislature's - their more effective socialization can produce a net reduction in the harms inflicted by the institutions' members. Second, autonomy for all institutions can be defended if the gains from assuring autonomy for groups whose values are compatible with …
Faith And Funding: Toward An Expressivist Model Of The Establishment Clause, David Cole
Faith And Funding: Toward An Expressivist Model Of The Establishment Clause, David Cole
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This article seeks to provide an alternative to the polarization that so often characterizes debates about church and state. In Part I, the author suggests that there are good policy reasons for supporting faith-based initiatives, and that these reasons ought to be attractive to liberals and progressives, many of whom have opposed faith-based initiatives. Faith-based social services are, after all, social services, and are often the very types of welfare services that liberals and progressives tend to support. Core religious values--in particular, concern about the less fortunate, a belief in human dignity, and a commitment to the possibility of redemption--reinforce …
Stability And Development In Canon Law And The Case Of "Definitive" Teaching, Ladislas M. Örsy
Stability And Development In Canon Law And The Case Of "Definitive" Teaching, Ladislas M. Örsy
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Stability is an essential quality of any good legal system because a community's laws are an expression of its identity, and there is no identity without permanency. Many times we hear in the United States that we are a country held together by our laws. Although the statement cannot be the full truth, it is obvious that if our laws ever lost their stability, the nation's identity would be imperiled. In a religious community where the source of its identity is in the common memory of a divine revelation, the demand for stability is even stronger. Fidelity to the "Word …