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Full-Text Articles in Law
Where To Place The “Nones” In The Church And State Debate? Empirical Evidence From Establishment Clause Cases In Federal Court, Gregory C. Sisk, Michael Heise
Where To Place The “Nones” In The Church And State Debate? Empirical Evidence From Establishment Clause Cases In Federal Court, Gregory C. Sisk, Michael Heise
St. John's Law Review
In this third iteration of our ongoing empirical examination of religious liberty decisions in the lower federal courts, we studied all digested Establishment Clause decisions by federal circuit and district court judges from 2006 through 2015. The first clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution directs that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” That provision has generated decades of controversy regarding the appropriate role of religion in public life.
Holding key variables constant, we found that Catholic judges approved Establishment Clause claims at a 29.6% rate, compared with a 41.5% rate before non-Catholic …
Establishment’S Political Priority To Free Exercise, Marc O. Degirolami
Establishment’S Political Priority To Free Exercise, Marc O. Degirolami
Faculty Publications
Americans are beset by disagreement about the First Amendment. Progressive scholars are attacking the venerable liberal view that First Amendment rights must not be constricted to secure communal, political benefits. To prioritize free speech rights, they say, reflects an unjust inflation of individual interest over our common political commitments. These disagreements afflict the Religion Clauses as well. Critics claim that religious exemption has become more important than the values of disestablishment that define the polity. Free exercise exemption, they argue, has subordinated establishment.
This Article contests these views. The fundamental rules and norms constituting the political regime—what the Article calls …