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The Pluralistic Foundations Of The Religion Clauses, Steven H. Shiffrin
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 First Free Exercise Case, Walter J. Walsh
The First Free Exercise Case, Walter J. Walsh
Articles
Part I of this Article tells the colonial history of religious freedom in New York State from a minority perspective, with specific reference to the secrecy of the confessional-the very practice that would be constitutionally tested in Philips. Part II describes the immediate social and political issues raised by the influx of Irish Catholic refugees into New York City in the wake of the failed United Irish Rebellion of 1798. Part III treats the unfriendly 1811 ruling of the federalist Chief Justice James Kent in People v. Ruggles as representative of the dominant Anglocentric constitutional legacy of imperial Protestant …