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Full-Text Articles in Law

Reflections/Lovingkindness, Abner S. Greene Jan 2022

Reflections/Lovingkindness, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Dilemma Of Liberal Pluralism, Abner S. Greene Jan 2022

The Dilemma Of Liberal Pluralism, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Supporters of reproductive rights and of queer rights may sometimes live in harmony with advocates for religious exemptions. But sometimes these goals conflict. This Article explores this tension as a matter of liberal democratic theory and U.S. constitutional law, offering a case for seeing a robust pluralism as contained within a proper understanding of the liberal democratic state. The state’s claimed authority may be the starting point, but just as the modern state was born in decentralized religious toleration, so should the modern state accommodate religious and other views of the good that compete with the state’s own views. The …


‘Nothing About Us Without Us’: Toward A Liberatory Heterodox Halakha, Laynie Laynie Soloman, Russell G. Pearce Jan 2022

‘Nothing About Us Without Us’: Toward A Liberatory Heterodox Halakha, Laynie Laynie Soloman, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

The role and function of “halakha” (Jewish law) in Jewish communal life is a divisive issue: while Orthodox Jews tend to embrace Jewish law, non-Orthodox Jews (here deemed “Heterodox”) generally reject Jewish law and halakhic discourse. We will explore the way in which Robert Cover’s work offers an antidote to categorical Heterodox distaste for halakha specifically, and law more broadly, providing a pathway into an articulation of halakha that may speak to Heterodox Jews specifically: one that is driven by creative “jurisgenerative” potential, that is informed by a paideic pluralism, and that is fundamentally democratic in its commitment to being …


Review Of Friendship In The Hebrew Bible By Saul M. Olyan, Ethan J. Leib Jan 2020

Review Of Friendship In The Hebrew Bible By Saul M. Olyan, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Liberalism And The Distinctiveness Of Religious Belief, Abner S. Greene Jan 2020

Liberalism And The Distinctiveness Of Religious Belief, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Finding the appropriate sweet spot for religion’s role in the state and how state action may affect the lives of religious people continues to be elusive. Cécile Laborde’s ambitious book Liberalism’s Religion comes down firmly on the side of seeing religion as not distinctive, even in a liberal democracy. To the extent that nonestablishment and free exercise norms should prevail, they should prevail insofar as we can disaggregate religion into components that it shares with nonreligious belief and practice. In this review essay, I advance a position on which Laborde spends little time in her book — religion is distinctive …


Christians And Pagans, Abner S. Greene Jan 2018

Christians And Pagans, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Religious Freedom And (Other) Civil Liberties: Is There A Middle Ground?, Abner S. Greene Jan 2015

Religious Freedom And (Other) Civil Liberties: Is There A Middle Ground?, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

There appears to be an intractable debate between those who favor religious accommodations and those who favor civil liberties such as abortion rights and equality rights for same-sex couples. Many take firm positions of truth about one matter or the other. Here, I sketch a middle ground, continuing my endorsement of a robust normative or value pluralism. I canvass some arguments for this position, while also describing and critiquing some works of intellectual history that seem too wedded to one teleological posture or another. Despite my support for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, I critique the Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling, …


Religion And Theistic Faith: On Koppelman, Leiter, Secular Purpose, And Accomodations, Abner S. Greene Jan 2013

Religion And Theistic Faith: On Koppelman, Leiter, Secular Purpose, And Accomodations, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

What makes religion distinctive, and how does answering that question help us answer questions regarding religious freedom in a liberal democracy? In their books on religion in the United States under our Constitution, Andrew Koppelman (DefendingAmerican Religious Neutrality) and Brian Leiter (Why Tolerate Religion?) offer sharply different answers to this set of questions. This review essay first explores why we might treat religion distinctively, suggesting that in our constitutional order, it makes sense to focus on theism (or any roughly similar analogue) as the hallmark of religious belief and practice. Neither Koppelman nor Leiter focuses on this, in part because …


Charter Schools, The Establishment Clause, And The Neoliberal Turn In Public Education, Aaron J. Saiger Jan 2013

Charter Schools, The Establishment Clause, And The Neoliberal Turn In Public Education, Aaron J. Saiger

Faculty Scholarship

Regardless whether the American charter school can improve academic performance and provide effective alternatives to traditional public schools, its steady entrenchment as an institution portends significant, destabilizing changes across education law. In no area will its impact be more profound than the law of religion and schooling. Despite the general view that charter schools are public schools, charters’ neoliberal character — they are privately created and managed, and chosen by consumers in a marketplace — makes them private schools for Establishment Clause purposes, notwithstanding their public subsidy. This conclusion, which rests in substantial part on the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris vouchers …


Witchcraft Accusations And Human Rights: Case Studies From Malawi, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Katherine Glenn Jan 2011

Witchcraft Accusations And Human Rights: Case Studies From Malawi, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Katherine Glenn

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores potential community-based interventions to assist victims of witchcraft accusations, based on forty-five case studies from an experimental mobile legal-aid clinic in Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa where witchcraft accusations are widespread and often irreparably harm those accused. In Malawi, the accused are mainly older women who are often blamed for bewitching young children.


Finding Interior Peace In The Ordinary Practice Of Law: Wisdom From The Spiritual Tradition Of St. Teresa Of Avila, Jacqueline Nolan-Haley Jan 2007

Finding Interior Peace In The Ordinary Practice Of Law: Wisdom From The Spiritual Tradition Of St. Teresa Of Avila, Jacqueline Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Apparent Consistency Of Religion Clause Doctrine, The The Rehnquist Court And The First Amendment, Abner S. Greene Jan 2006

Apparent Consistency Of Religion Clause Doctrine, The The Rehnquist Court And The First Amendment, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

A hallmark of religion clause scholarship is the complaint that the doctrine is a hopeless muddle. However, the Rehnquist Court brought a considerable amount of consistency-well, apparent consistency- to the doctrine. I say "apparent consistency" because, just as a paradox is only a seeming contradiction, so was the Rehnquist Court's religion clause jurisprudence only seemingly consistent. The doctrine focuses on whether the government singles out religion for special benefit (generally problematic under the Establishment Clause) or for special burden (generally problematic under the Free Exercise Clause). If, on the other hand, the government benefits religion as part of a more …


Religious Lawyering Critique, The Aals Presentations, Bruce A. Green Jan 2005

Religious Lawyering Critique, The Aals Presentations, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

One might think about the relationship between law practice and religion in different ways, depending on how one views either the professional norms or religious belief and observance. Some of the most recent academic literature on "religious lawyering" is premised on a highly critical view of the profession's norms and a claim that religious convictions that bear on the practice of law are incompatible with, and preferable to, aspects of the professional norms. My purpose here is to identify, and raise some questions about, both this critique and this suggestion, and to show how they are in tension with other …


Faith And The Lawyer's Practice Symposium: Law Religion And The Public Good, Russell G. Pearce Jan 2001

Faith And The Lawyer's Practice Symposium: Law Religion And The Public Good, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

If there is a religious way to read, is there a religious way to be a lawyer? More and more lawyers, judges and scholars are answering yes to that question. We heard earlier from Cardinal Bevilacqua about the history of the Religious Lawyering Movement, which blossomed in the 1990s. There was writing about the law and religion before that time." We can date religious lawyering as a body of work in mainstream legal literature, as Cardinal Bevilacqua did, to the work of Professor Thomas Shaffer in the 1980s.Why did this movement take off in the 1990s? Again, what accounts for …


Regionalism And The Religion Clauses: The Contribution Of Fisher Ames, Marc Arkin Jan 1999

Regionalism And The Religion Clauses: The Contribution Of Fisher Ames, Marc Arkin

Faculty Scholarship

On August 20, 1789, Massachusetts Federalist Fisher Ames rose to address the House of Representatives in one of his rare contributions to the debate on the Bill of Rights. 1 The day before, sitting as a Committee of the Whole, the House had concluded its brief discussion of the proposed religion amendment to the federal Constitution by agreeing to New Hampshire Representative Samuel Livermore's formula that "Congress shall make no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of conscience." 2 Now, on the 20th, before the House could formally adopt Livermore's language, Representative Ames proposed a different wording. He moved …


Kiryas Joel And Two Mistakes About Equality , Abner S. Greene Jan 1996

Kiryas Joel And Two Mistakes About Equality , Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

In 1948, Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum founded the congregation Yetev Lev D'Satmar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Over the next twenty-five years, the Satmar Hasidic sect grew, and members started thinking about leaving the urban, heterogeneous setting for a place where they could live in relative isolation. In 1974, Satmar families began leaving Brooklyn for upstate New York. They purchased property in the Town of Monroe, and later, after a zoning dispute with the Town, incorporated as the Village of Kiryas Joel. As of 1990, approximately 10,000 Satmar Jews lived in or around the Village. The Satmars dress in conformance with a semiformal …


To Save A Life: Why A Rabbi And A Jewish Lawyer Must Disclose A Client Confidence Symposium: Executing The Wrong Person: The Professionals' Ethical Dilemmas, Russell G. Pearce Jan 1995

To Save A Life: Why A Rabbi And A Jewish Lawyer Must Disclose A Client Confidence Symposium: Executing The Wrong Person: The Professionals' Ethical Dilemmas, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

As adopted by courts and legislatures, lawyer's ethical codes have the force of law. They require a lawyer to keep information confidential unless the lawyer knows the client will commit a future crime. Jewish tradition generally forbids the disclosure of confidential information as "a terrible invasion of another person's privacy."This interdiction, rooted in the Torah's prohibition on talebearing, applies even when the information disclosed is true. The great medieval commentator, Maimonides, observed that gossip "ruins the world.” He further reproached "the evil tongue of the slander-monger who speaks disparagingly of one's fellow, even if the truth is told." Accordingly, the …


The Political Balance Of The Religion Clauses, Abner S. Greene Jan 1992

The Political Balance Of The Religion Clauses, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

When the Supreme Court held in Employment Division v. Smith that the Free Exercise Clause does not protect religious practices from otherwise valid laws that incidentally burden those practices, it followed a particular theory of democratic politics. That some laws might unintentionally burden certain religious practices is, said the Court, an "unavoidable consequence of democratic government [that] must be preferred to a system in which each conscience is a law unto itself." The Court was certainly right in one sense: To claim that conscientious objection to an otherwise valid law should exempt one from that law is to claim that …