Law Commons^™

Funding Faith: The Paycheck Protection Program's Establishment Clause Violation, Brenna Jean O'Connor

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In the early months of 2020, COVID-19 had a swift and profound impact on public health, the economy, state and local governments, and businesses across the United States. In response, on March 27, 2020, the United States Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (“CARES Act”) to protect the American people from the worsening public health crisis and mitigate the resulting economic downturn. Additionally, within the CARES Act, Congress established the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”), which expanded the Small Business Administration’s (“SBA”) authority to guarantee forgivable loans to eligible small businesses. Among other prerequisites, the PPP …

The Suspension Clause After Department Of Homeland Security V. Thuraissigiam, Jonathan Hafetz

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In June 2020, in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected a constitutional challenge to Congress’s decision to eliminate habeas corpus jurisdiction over legal challenges to expedited removal orders by noncitizens in federal detention.

In Thuraissigiam, U.S. border patrol stopped the petitioner, Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, a Sri Lankan national of Tamil ethnicity, shortly after he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without inspection or an entry document. The petitioner asserted that he was fleeing persecution in his home country and sought asylum in the United States. The asylum officer concluded that Thuraissigiam had …

The Barton Doctrine's Applicability To Suits Against Bankruptcy Trustees When The Bankruptcy Court Lacks Jurisdiction Over The Matter, Chelsea Frankel

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

In Barton v. Barbour, the Supreme Court established the general rule that a lawsuit cannot be brought against a receiver for acts done within their authority without leave of the court that appointed such receiver. The Court precluded a personal injury suit against a company's receiver without leave of the appointing court, finding that if the plaintiff were permitted to recover on his personal injury claim against the receiver, he would be recovering from the receivership property "without regard to the rights of other creditors or the orders of the court which is administering the trust property." The …

The New Thoreaus, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

Fifty years ago, in Wisconsin v. Yoder, the Supreme Court famously indicated that “religion” denotes a communal rather than a purely individual phenomenon. An organized group like the Amish would qualify as religious, the Court wrote, but a solitary seeker like the nineteenth century transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau would not. At the time, the question was mostly peripheral; hardly any Americans claimed to have their own, personal religions that would make it difficult for them to comply with civil law. In the intervening decades, though, American religion has changed. One-fifth of us—roughly sixty-six million people—now claim, like Thoreau, to …

The New Disestablishments, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The individual has the autonomy of choice respecting matters of sex, gender, and procreation. The findings of science as established by the knowledge class, together with the policy preferences of that class in this domain, should be imposed on everyone. These propositions reflect two central creeds of what this Article calls the "new establishment." They, or statements like them, are the basis for policies across the nation touching many walks of life, from business to education, media, advertising, science, healthcare and medicine, and more.

Whether these propositions constitute a "religious" establishment turns out to be an irrelevant distraction. To …

Establishment’S Political Priority To Free Exercise, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

Americans are beset by disagreement about the First Amendment. Progressive scholars are attacking the venerable liberal view that First Amendment rights must not be constricted to secure communal, political benefits. To prioritize free speech rights, they say, reflects an unjust inflation of individual interest over our common political commitments. These disagreements afflict the Religion Clauses as well. Critics claim that religious exemption has become more important than the values of disestablishment that define the polity. Free exercise exemption, they argue, has subordinated establishment.

This Article contests these views. The fundamental rules and norms constituting the political regime—what the Article calls …