Law Commons^™

Originalism And The Religion Clauses: A Response To Professor George, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

This response to Professor Robert George's thoughtful remarks tries to preserve the flavor of a brief rejoinder in a debate. I sketch differences with him over some major topics, but I do not develop these at length.

Religious Law And Civil Law: Using Secular Law To Assure Observance Of Practices With Religious Significance, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Civil law in the United States rarely helps to enforce religious standards or demands that people perform actions whose significance relates to religious obligations. Yet, some American states do have such involvement with certain observances of Orthodox and Conservative Judaism. Many states enforce kosher requirements, to which Orthodox and some Conservative Jews adhere. The laws, which penalize fraud in the labeling of products as kosher, serve the secular interest in preventing deception of consumers. However, the laws also force the state to decide when religious regulations have been violated.

Orthodox and Conservative Jewish divorces raise a second kind of involvement. …

Should The Religion Clauses Of The Constitution Be Amended?, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Our subject, whether the religion clauses of the federal constitution should be amended, goes to the heart of relations between government and the practice of religion in our society. These relations deeply affect the health of both religion and government. When public officials persecute some religions and embrace others, the risks are political tyranny and rigid, unthinking, unfeeling, vapid religion. No one wishes that fate for us.

When most people ask whether the religion clauses should be amended, they are really asking whether judicial interpretations have become so misguided that Congress and state legislatures should intervene and invoke the cumbersome …