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Full-Text Articles in Law
Natural Law And The Rhetoric Of Empire: Reynolds V. United States, Polygamy, And Imperialism, Nathan B. Oman
Natural Law And The Rhetoric Of Empire: Reynolds V. United States, Polygamy, And Imperialism, Nathan B. Oman
Faculty Publications
In 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court construed the Free Exercise Clause for the first time, holding in Reynolds v. United States that Congress could punish Mormon polygamy. Historians have interpreted Reynolds, and the anti-polygamy legislation and litigation that it midwifed, as an extension of Reconstruction into the American West. This Article offers a new historical interpretation, one that places the birth of Free Exercise jurisprudence in Reynolds within an international context of Great Power imperialism and American international expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. It does this by recovering the lost theory of religious freedom that the Mormons …
The Forum Of Conscience: Applying Standards Under The Free Exercise Clause, Paul Marcus
The Forum Of Conscience: Applying Standards Under The Free Exercise Clause, Paul Marcus
Faculty Publications
The 1973 Supreme Court decision in Wisconsin v. Yoder reenforced and amplified the Court's earlier holding in Sherbert v. Verner that the free exercise clause of the first amendment requires the state to render substantial deference to religiously motivated behavior in the application of its laws and regulatory schemes. In this article, Mr. Marcus traces the evolving standards of free exercise doctrine and observes that the "balancing test" which has resulted from that evolution requires still further refinement to give religious freedom its full constitutional due. The author then illustrates how the new standards of free exercise might be applied …