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Between Law And Religion: Procedural Challenges To Religious Arbitration Awards, Michael Helfand
Between Law And Religion: Procedural Challenges To Religious Arbitration Awards, Michael Helfand
Michael A Helfand
This Essay presented at the Sharia and Halakha in America Conference explores the unique status of religious law as a hybrid concept that simultaneously retains the characteristics of both law and religion. To do so, the Article considers as a case study how courts should evaluate procedural challenges to religious arbitration awards. To respond to such challenges, courts must treat religious law as law when defining the contractually adopted religious procedural rules and treat religious law as religion when reviewing precisely what the religious procedural rules require. On this account, constitutional and arbitration doctrine combine to insulate religious arbitration awards …
Religious Arbitration And The New Multiculturalism: Negotiating Conflicting Legal Orders, Michael A. Helfand
Religious Arbitration And The New Multiculturalism: Negotiating Conflicting Legal Orders, Michael A. Helfand
Michael A Helfand
This Article considers a trend towards what I have termed the "new multiculturalism," where conflicts between law and religion are less about recognition and symbolism and more about conflicting legal orders. Nothing typifies this trend more than the increased visibility of religious arbitration, whereby religious groups use current arbitration doctrine to have their disputes adjudicated not in U.S. courts and under U.S. law, but before religious courts and under religious law. This dynamic has pushed the following question to the forefront of the multicultural agenda: under what circumstances should U.S. courts enforce arbitration awards issued by religious courts in accordance …
How The Diversity Rationale Lays The Groundwork For New Discrimination: Examining The Trajectory Of Equal Protection Doctrine, Michael Helfand
How The Diversity Rationale Lays The Groundwork For New Discrimination: Examining The Trajectory Of Equal Protection Doctrine, Michael Helfand
Michael A Helfand
This Article advocates differentiating between two distinct categories of equal protection cases. The first-what I have termed indicator cases-are instances where courts consider whether there are sufficient factual indications to demonstrate the existence of aprimafacie equal protection violation. The second-violation casesare instances where courts consider, having already determined the existence of an equal protection violation, whether there is a good enough justification for a prima facie equal protection violation. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has not differentiated between these two different types of cases. This has led to a string of decisions where the Supreme Court has erroneously looked for justifications …
The Usual Suspect Classifications: Criminals, Aliens And The Future Of Same-Sex Marriage, Michael A. Helfand
The Usual Suspect Classifications: Criminals, Aliens And The Future Of Same-Sex Marriage, Michael A. Helfand
Michael A Helfand
In this Article, I argue for a new understanding of the immutability factor employed by courts in determining which classifications ought to receive suspect status under the Equal Protection Clause. Drawing on the process-based foundations of the Equal Protection Clause, this new understanding defines immutable traits not as traits that cannot be changed, but as traits that are in the words of the Supreme Court in Frontiero v. Richardson, mere "accident[s] of birth." In contrast, courts and scholars typically center the immutability inquiry on an individual’s technical ability to exit a particular class, which has led to inconsistencies in …