Law Commons^™

Legal Scholars & Theologians Partner On An Ambitious Vision For Religious Liberty, Elizabeth Reiner Platt

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

Oct. 6, 2020—To safeguard the right to religious freedom, the next presidential administration must end the hyper-surveillance of Muslims, welcome religious refugees, protect land sacred to Native communities, restore church-state separation, and withdraw policies that favor particular religious beliefs, argues a new report co-authored by the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia University (LRRP) and Auburn Seminary.

Exclusion And Equality: How Exclusion From The Political Process Renders Religious Liberty Unequal, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Exclusion from the political process is a central question in American law. Thus far, however, it has not been recognized how religious Americans are excluded from the political process and what this means for religious equality.

Put simply, both administrative lawmaking and § 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code substantially exclude religious Americans from the political process that produces laws. As a result, apparently equal laws are apt, in reality, to be unequal for religious Americans. Political exclusion threatens religious equality.

The primary practical conclusion concerns administrative law. It will be seen that this sort of "law" is made …

Establishment Clause Limits On Free Exercise Accommodations, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Among the most vexing questions in the law of the religion clauses is when a legal measure that might otherwise be justified as an accommodation to free exercise is instead a forbidden establishment of religion. In a book about free exercise, I have provided some idea just how complex this question can be. I now tackle it head on. Scholars have fairly observed that the Supreme Court has given us no theory, or no tenable theory, for drawing the line between permissible accommodation and impermissible establishment. We will look at what the Court has said and done, as well as …

More Is Less, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Is the First Amendment's right of free exercise of religion conditional upon government interests? Many eighteenth-century Americans said it was utterly unconditional. For example, James Madison and numerous contemporaries declared in 1785 that "the right of every man to exercise ['Religion'] ... is in its nature an unalienable right" and "therefore that in matters of Religion, no mans right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society." In contrast, during the past forty years, the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly conditioned the right of free exercise on compelling government interests. The Court not merely qualifies the practice of the …

Religious Convictions And Lawmaking, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, presented as the 1985-86 Thomas M. Cooley Lectures at the University of Michigan School of Law on March 10-12, 1986, Professor Greenawalt addresses the role that religious conviction properly plays in the liberal citizen's political decisionmaking in a liberal democratic society. Rejecting the notion that all political questions can be decided on rational secular grounds, Professor Greenawalt argues that the liberal democratic citizen may rely on his religious convictions when secular morality is unable to resolve issues critical to a political decision. The examples of animal rights and environmental protection, abortion, and welfare assistance illustrate situations where …