Law Commons^™

Recoiling From Religion, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

This is an essay reviewing Professor Marci A. Hamilton's book, GOD VS. THE GAVEL: RELIGION AND THE RULE OF LAW (Cambridge Univ. Press 2005).

Professor Marci Hamilton has written a forceful and obviously heartfelt book that should give pause to committed champions of religious free exercise. She argues convincingly that religious freedom is too often invoked to shield opprobrious and socially harmful activity, and she describes numerous examples of such abuses that make any civilized person's blood run cold. Her avowed aims are to debunk the “hazardous myth” that religion is “inherently and always good for society” and to increase …

Religious Liberty And The Law, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Traditional Values Or New Tradition Of Prejudice? The Boy Scouts Of America Vs. The Unitarian Universalist Association Of Congregations, Eric Alan Isaacson

Eric Alan Isaacson

President William Howard Taft, a Unitarian leader whose liberal faith had been viciously attacked by religious conservatives in the 1908 presidential campaign, used the White House as a platform in 1911 to launch a new nonsectarian organization for youth: The Boy Scouts of America (“BSA”). Lately, however, the BSA itself has come under the control of religious conservatives – who in 1992 banned Taft’s denomination from the BSA’s Religious Relationships Committee, and in 1998 threw Taft’s denomination out of its Religious Emblems Program. The denomination’s offense: A tradition of teaching its children that institutionalized discrimination is wrong. Unitarian Universalist religious …

Prayer Or Prison: The Unconstitutionality Of Mandatory Faith-Based Substance Abuse Treatment, Christopher M. Meissner

Cleveland State Law Review

Whether faith-based substance abuse treatments are effective is certainly a valid question in its rightful place, but it is not the inquiry pursued here. Rather, this Note argues that a drug court's act of assigning unwilling offenders to twelve-step or otherwise religiously-based residential treatment centers violates the Establishment Clause guarantee. Specifically, such centers regulate the offenders' beliefs and compel them to affirm whatever tenets are professed at the individual treatment center. Moreover, a court's subsequent act of threatening or actually imposing criminal sanctions upon offenders for refusing to complete such treatment programs constitutes punishment for refusing to be religiously indoctrinated …

Does Cutter V. Wilkinson Change The Analysis Of Mandated Dui Treatment Programs?: A Critical Response, Eric L. Sherbine

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Accommodating Religion And Law In The Twenty-First Century, Andrew J. King

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Thou Shalt Not?, Mark Strasser

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Wrestling With God: The Courts' Tortuous Treatment Of Religion, Patrick Garry

Patrick M. Garry

The relationship between church and state is both controversial and unsettled. For decades, the courts have vacillated dramatically in their rulings on when a particular governmental accommodation rises to the level of an impermissible state establishment of religion. Without a comprehensive theory of the First Amendment establishment clause, religion cases have devolved into a jurisprudence of minutiae. Seemingly insignificant occurrences, such as a student reading a religious story or a teacher wearing a cross on a necklace, have led to years of litigation. And because of the constant threat of judicial intrusion, a pervasive social anxiety exists about the presence …