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Full-Text Articles in Law
Religion And The Rehnquist Court, Kent Greenawalt
Religion And The Rehnquist Court, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
This summary Article pays predominant attention to what the Rehnquist Court has altered. It slights a significant range of continuity. That includes the Court's strong rejection of laws that discriminate among religions or that target religious practices and the Court's inhospitable response to religious exercises that are sponsored by public schools. Although "continuity" may be a misleading term for subjects a court has not addressed, the Supreme Court has not touched the law regarding judicial involvement in church property disputes since Rehnquist became Chief Justice, and nothing it has decided presages an obvious shift in that jurisprudence.
Religious Convictions And Political Choice: Some Further Thoughts, Kent Greenawalt
Religious Convictions And Political Choice: Some Further Thoughts, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
Let me start by putting my topic in a concrete context. Suppose a statute is offered to relieve animals of the oppressively cramped conditions of modern factory farming. Advocates claim that calves, lambs, pigs, and chickens should have a better quality of life before being slaughtered for food. Opponents argue that factory farming helps provide tasty, inexpensive meat and that farmers should be free to decide how to treat animals that they own. At stake in the decision whether to restrict farmers is some balancing of animal interests against human interests. In our relatively wealthy society the human interests are …
Religiously Based Premises And Laws Restrictive Of Liberty, Kent Greenawalt
Religiously Based Premises And Laws Restrictive Of Liberty, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
My subject concerns the connection between religious premises and political decisions that restrict people's liberty. This topic has implications for the constitutionality of laws adopted on religious grounds, and I sketch the most important of these implications at the conclusion of this article. My main focus, however, is the proper attitudes of citizens and legislators in our liberal democracy, and, in particular, whether they should rest their judgments on religious premises. In addressing this issue, I concentrate on the responsibilities of citizens and on laws restricting consenting sexual acts and abortions. My main burden is to illustrate two radically different …
Religious Convictions And Lawmaking, Kent Greenawalt
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 …