Law Commons^™

Hands Off! Civil Court Involvement In Conflicts Over Religious Property, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, Professor Kent Greenawalt explores how civil courts can constitutionally resolve conflicts over religious property. Although the practical and theoretical significance of this part of First Amendment law has often been overlooked, issues concerning church property continue to raise difficulties for both the courts charged with their resolution and the church members who wish to avoid the courts' intervention entirely. This Article argues that the general approach of noninvolvement that the Supreme Court has advocated in this area is consonant with broader themes in religion clause adjudication. Within this more general approach, Professor Greenawalt considers the two alternative …

Hostile Environments And The Religious Employee, Theresa M. Beiner, John M. A. Dipippa

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Of Pandas, People, And The First Amendment: The Constitutionality Of Teaching Intelligent Design In The Public Schools, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the Supreme Court's 1987 decision in Edwards v. Aguillard, striking down Arkansas' statute requiring equal time for the teaching of creationism and evolution, the debate over whether some form of creationism should be taught in public schools has recently enjoyed a resurgence. In this note, Jay Wexler applies the Supreme Court's Establishment Clause to a new variant of creationism that posits the existence of an intelligent designer as an alternative to evolution. Wexler argues that teaching intelligent design theory in the public schools violates the Establishment Clause. After explaining that the Supreme Court has always applied the Establishment Clause …

The Improbability Of Religion Clause Theory, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

Religious Liberty And Democratic Politics, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Some time ago, President Clinton talked to a gathering of religious journalists about abortion. He said that he did not believe that the biblical passages often cited by those who are "pro-life" indicate· clearly that abortion is wrong and should be prohibited. The reasons many people have for wanting abortion to be prohibited, or for allowing abortion, relate to their religious convictions. These people, for the most part, regard it as perfectly appropriate that religious perspectives help determine public policy on abortion in the United States. Others object. They say that the religious views of some people should not be …

Religious Expression In The Public Square – The Building Blocks For An Intermediate Position, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

The problem of religious expression in the public square is not primarily legal in a narrow sense. We are not talking about whether people are allowed to voice certain kinds of opinions or to vote on certain kinds of grounds. The problem is about how citizens and officials in liberal democracies should act. My own position on this problem is an intermediate one, in a sense I shall shortly explain. Its plausibility depends on some sense of the strengths and weaknesses of positions at each end of the spectrum. I shall begin with a thumbnail sketch of these.

Religious Outlaws: Narratives Of Legality And The Politics Of Citizen Interpretation, Barbara L. Bezdek

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

Quo Vadis: The Status And Prospects Of Tests Under The Religion Clauses, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

As the 1994 term drew to a close, "tests" for the Religion Clauses were in nearly total disarray. Apart from cases of discrimination against religions, and disputes over church property, a student of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence could not formulate any general tests that a majority of the Justices clearly support. As exciting as this state of affairs is for those who welcome uncertainty and change, it is disquieting for lawyers and clients, for judges who must decide free exercise and establishment claims, and for Supreme Court Justices who aspire to stable principles of adjudication. In this essay, I provide …

The Ironic State Of Religious Liberty In America, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On Public Reason, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Since the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971, John Rawls has refined, qualified, and enriched his political philosophy, responding generously and with patient analytical care to difficulties posed by critics. Political Liberalism embodies the major developments in Rawls's thought during those two decades. Rawls continues to be a strong defender of political liberalism, but in various respects his philosophical claims are more modest than those he offered in 1971, and the political life he recommends involves more accommodation to the diverse perspectives and ways of life one expects to find in liberal democracies. In most of the chapters …

Foreword To An Interview With Fred Korematsu, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

One afternoon in the spring of 1942, Fred Korematsu was arrested for doing what would have been perfectly innocent and natural for millions of other American citizens, but was for him a criminal offense. He went for a stroll with his fianc6e along a public street in San Leandro, California.' By order of General John L. DeWitt, Americans of Japanese ancestry had been directed to remain in their homes during daylight hours and to ready themselves for transport to "assembly centers," where they would wait out the war.' Korematsu's family had already reported to such a center near San Francisco, …

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 …

The Pending Gauntlet To Free Exercise: Mandating That Clergy Report Child Abuse, Michael T. Flannery

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Religious, The Secular, And The Antithetical, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

Toward A Constitutional Jurisprudence Of Religious Group Rights, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Disestablished Religion In Pennsylvania And Kentucky: A Study In Constitutional Interpretation, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Democracy, Autonomy, And Values: Some Thoughts On Religion And Law In Modern America, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Roger Hendrix

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Concept Of Religion In State Constitutions, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

A year and a half ago an article of mine was published on religion as a concept in constitutional law. The article concerned how courts should approach decisions about whether a belief, practice, organization, or classification is religious. The article did not address, except in passing, what the constitutional standards under the free exercise and establishment clauses should be if something that is religious is aided or inhibited in some way. Since in most cases arising under the religion clauses, the presence of something religious is not itself disputed, my article concerned only a small slice of religion cases.

My …

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 …

Religion As A Concept In Constitutional Law, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Because federal and state constitutions forbid government from infringing upon religious liberty or supporting religion, courts must sometimes decide whether a claim, activity, organization, purpose, or classification is religious. In most cases arising under these religion clauses, the religiousness of an activity or organization will be obvious. However; when the presence of religion is seriously controverted, the threshold question, "defining religion," becomes important. Most courts have prudently eschewed theoretical generalizations in approaching that question. Academic commentators have struggled to startlingly diverse proposals.

This Article suggests that in both free exercise and establishment cases, courts should decide whether something is religious …