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Nonbelievers, Nelson Tebbe
Nonbelievers, Nelson Tebbe
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
How should courts handle nonbelievers who bring religious freedom claims? Although this question is easy to grasp, it presents a genuine puzzle because the religion clauses of the Constitution, along with many contemporary statutes, protect only religion by their terms. From time to time, judges and lawyers have therefore struggled with the place of nonbelievers in the American scheme of religious freedom. Today, this problem is gaining prominence because of nonbelievers’ rising visibility. New lines of social conflict are forming around them, generating disputes that have already gone legal. In this Article, I argue that no wholesale response will do. …
Smith In Theory And Practice, Nelson Tebbe
Smith In Theory And Practice, Nelson Tebbe
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Employment Division v. Smith controversially held that general laws that were neutral toward religion would no longer be presumptively invalid, regardless of how much they incidentally burdened religious practices. That decision sparked a debate that continues today, twenty years later. This symposium Essay explores the argument that subsequent courts have in fact been less constrained by the principal rule of Smith than advocates on both sides of the controversy usually assume. Lower courts administering real world disputes often find they have all the room they need to grant relief from general laws, given exceptions written into the decision itself and …
Hosanna-Tabor And Supreme Court Precedent: An Analysis Of The Ministerial Exception In The Context Of The Supreme Court’S Hands-Off Approach To Religious Doctrine, Samuel J. Levine
Hosanna-Tabor And Supreme Court Precedent: An Analysis Of The Ministerial Exception In The Context Of The Supreme Court’S Hands-Off Approach To Religious Doctrine, Samuel J. Levine
Scholarly Works
The United States Supreme Court‘s review of the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in the case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC could lead to a major development in the Court‘s Religion Clause jurisprudence. On one level, Hosanna-Tabor presents important questions regarding the interrelationship between employment discrimination laws and the constitutional rights of religious organizations. The narrow issue at the center of the case is the ministerial exception, a doctrine that precludes courts from adjudicating discrimination claims arising out of disputes between religious institutions and their ministerial employees. This Essay …
Religious And Political Virtues And Values In Congruence Or Conflict?: On Smith, Bob Jones University, And Christian Legal Society, Linda C. Mcclain
Religious And Political Virtues And Values In Congruence Or Conflict?: On Smith, Bob Jones University, And Christian Legal Society, Linda C. Mcclain
Faculty Scholarship
A basic tension in the U.S. constitutional and political order exists between two important ideas about the relationship between civil society and the state: (1) families, religious institutions, voluntary associations, and other groups are foundational sources, or “seedbeds,” of virtues and values that undergird constitutional democracy, and (2) these same institutions guard against governmental orthodoxy and overweening governmental power by generating their own distinctive virtues and values and by being independent locations of power and authority. The first idea envisions a comfortable congruence between civil society and government: the values and virtues - and habits and skills - cultivated in …