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Free Exercise For Whom? -- Could The Religious Liberty Principle That Catholics Established In Perez V. Sharp Also Protect Same-Sex Couples' Right To Marry?, Eric Alan Isaacson May 2015

Free Exercise For Whom? -- Could The Religious Liberty Principle That Catholics Established In Perez V. Sharp Also Protect Same-Sex Couples' Right To Marry?, Eric Alan Isaacson

Eric Alan Isaacson

Recent discussions about the threat that same-sex couples hypothetically pose to the religious freedom of Americans whose religions traditions frown upon same-sex unions have largely overlooked the possibility that same-sex couples might have their own religious-liberty interest in being able to marry. The General Synod of the United Church of Christ brought the issue to the fore with an April 2014 lawsuit challenging North Carolina laws barring same-sex marriages. Authored by a lawyer who represented the California Council of Churches and other religions organizations as amici curiae in recent marriage-equality litigation, this article argues that although marriage is a secular …


Lyman Trumbull: Author Of The Thirteenth Amendment, Author Of The Civil Rights Act, And The First Second Amendment Lawyer, David B. Kopel Feb 2015

Lyman Trumbull: Author Of The Thirteenth Amendment, Author Of The Civil Rights Act, And The First Second Amendment Lawyer, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull is not well-known today, but he is one of the "Founding Sons" who transformed the nation and the Constitution before, during, and after the Civil War. He wrote the Thirteenth Amendment, the first Freedmen's Bureau Bill, and the Civil Rights Act. He sponsored the first federal statutes which actually freed slaves. As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and later as a civil rights attorney, he did more to protect Second Amendment rights--including taking a test case to the U.S. Supreme Court (Presser v. Illinois)--than did any other lawyer or legislator in the century after Jefferson …


The French Law "Marriage For All" A Lot Of Noise, And Then?, Frank S. Giaoui Jan 2015

The French Law "Marriage For All" A Lot Of Noise, And Then?, Frank S. Giaoui

Frank S. Giaoui

Upon a recent decision of the Federal Supreme Court, the USA has become the 15th country in the World to act marriage as a civil right for same-sex couples. Just two years before, in a very different constitutional environment, France acted an equivalent law including adoptive filiation. France had to overcome a long debate at the parliament and passionate reactions among the various secular and religious constituencies of its society. This article tends to address three main questions: How does the law actually change the family environment of same-sex couples? Why the most willing legislators advised by the most competent …