Law Commons^™

Giving The Equal Rights Amendment Teeth: A Proposal For Gender Equality Legislation Modeled After The Civil Rights Act Of 1964, Samantha Gagnon

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Contrary to the belief of eighty percent of Americans, the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. The effect of this lack of protection can be seen in every corner of our society, including economic inequalities and a lack of representation in leadership. For almost one hundred years, women’s organizations and activists have attempted to rectify this by advocating for the inclusion of an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the Constitution. In the past few years, there has been a revived push for the ERA due to the amendment’s first congressional hearing in thirty-six years, …

Comments On Steven Smith, Pagans And Christians In The City, Michael P. Moreland

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

One of the most interesting aspects of this generally very interesting book was the discussion of sexual morality in paganism and Christianity. I have thought for a while that much of the contemporary debate about religious freedom is not about religious freedom in a generic sense but instead about religious freedom in a very particular context—sex. But that is a descriptive point—much more challenging is trying to give an account of why sex should have come to be (or as Smith’s argument implies, has long been) the battlefield on which much of the fight over religious freedom takes place. …

Dialoguing With Paganism, Helen M. Alvare

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Professor Smith’s comparison of ancient and contemporary beliefs in the “immanent sacred” works well. By this I mean that it’s quite plausible, and accounts for quite a few contemporary claims, disputes, and movements in both law and culture.

The book’s implications for law are likely too complicated to allow for anything like its straightforward application in today’s religion clause contests. Still, it might indirectly assist traditional believers to lower the temperature of, or even avoid, such contests. I develop each of these points below.

Augustine's "Two Cities" And Steven Smith's Pagans And Christians, Brian Dunkle, S.J.

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Although there are many modern voices juxtaposing pagans and Christians, I want to focus on an ancient source, Augustine of Hippo’s City of God (against the Pagans), which is one of the inspirations for Smith’s title. While the bishop of Hippo shows up occasionally in Smith’s account—indeed, his conversion is central to Chapter Five, Looking beyond the World: The Christian Revolution—Augustine’s description of the “two cities,” Babylon and Jerusalem, makes only a brief appearance. So as a scholar of both historical theology and Augustine (and as someone innocent of constitutional legal theory), I suggest that the City …

A Tale Of Two Cities: Religious Freedom In A Secular Age, Anna Su

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Understanding the terms under which Christianity and paganism could coexist in antiquity thus gives us a semblance of an answer to the question posed early on in the book. In ancient Rome, Pliny asks why Christians were being subjected to legal sanctions, while in our present time, Douglas Laycock asks why people—referring to same-sex couples suing wedding photographers, florists, and bakers who object on religious grounds to their union—would insist on these services they neither need nor want? The paganism of ancient Rome welcomed a plurality of cults and religions but only up to a certain point. When Christians …

Many Cities, One Nation: A Response To Steven Smith's Pagans And Christians In The City, Bruce P. Frohnen

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

In his treatment of contemporary legal issues and, more deeply, his analysis of the manner in which changing religious assumptions and goals shape the culture from which law naturally grows, Smith has provided both a strong critique of contemporary “secular” pieties and an explanation for the culture wars so often derided or minimized by those most determined to deconstruct traditional culture. Still, I would argue that Smith’s wide-ranging, radical rethinking of contemporary social disorder does not go far enough. As Smith’s discussion of contemporary judicial treatment of social structure makes clear, today’s legal elites are at heart totalitarian in …

Christians And Pagans, Abner S. Greene

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

In this response paper, I will offer four thoughts. First, I’m not sure the contemporary picture is best described as pagans vs. Christians. Second, I question the subtle move throughout the book from a generative/creative understanding of God to seeing God as normative, as supervening in human affairs regarding right and wrong conduct. Third, I push back on the notion that theistic belief (or, perhaps, the very existence of God) is necessary to ground meaning and value. Fourth, I discuss some modern-day U.S. constitutional issues that Smith discusses as examples of pagans persecuting Christians: (a) state-sponsored religious symbols, (b) …

Ironies In The City: Reflections On Steven Smith's Pagans And Christians In The City, Perry Dane

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Nevertheless, some deep ironies and puzzles run through the text of Pagans and Christians. Smith is too careful and subtle to ignore these undercurrents entirely. But it will be worth bringing them to the surface, not only for their own sake but because they might help suggest an alternative to Smith’s most rough-edged claims. My aim in this essay is not merely to nitpick. Any work as magisterial as Smith’s book will generalize and elide along the way. But I do hope by the accumulation of details to suggest a fundamental worry that goes to the most charged …

A Perfect Storm: Religion, Sex, And Administrative Law, Helen M. Alvare

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In order to propose a way forward toward better sexual and reproductive health regulation, which also avoids undercutting or crossing swords with religion, this Article will proceed as follows: Part I will paint with a broad brush the current state of sexual and reproductive health problems in the United States, focusing a bit upon younger Americans to whom SRA programs are addressed. It will highlight disparities according to race and socioeconomic conditions when these obtain. These are troubling on their face, but particularly troubling today at a time of perceived heightened racial and socioeconomic class tension in the United …

Ballin In The Boardroom: Changing The Social Context Of Sexual Harassment, Todd J. Clark

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

No abstract provided.

The Necessity Of Sex Change: A Struggle For Intersex And Transsex Liberties, Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Transsex individuals often desire the future body that they should have, while intersex individuals often mourn the body they had before an unwanted normalizing surgery interfered with it. Thus, Judith Butler, a dominant feminist-queer theorist who has had a significant role in the shaping of queer theory and politics since the early 1990s, has lately commented that "intersex and transsex sometimes seem to be movements at odds with each other, the first opposing unwanted surgery, the second sometimes calling for elective surgery ...." This proposition serves as a point of departure for this Article, which explores current legal …