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First Amendment

Constitutional Law

Michael A Helfand

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Full-Text Articles in Law

When Judges Are Theologians: Adjudicating Religious Questions, Michael A. Helfand Dec 2017

When Judges Are Theologians: Adjudicating Religious Questions, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

In this chapter, I explore how judges—and, more generally, U.S. courts—deal with legal disputes when they must consider not only laws and facts, but also religion, or maybe even more precisely, theology. Indeed, in a wide range of circumstances, judges are confronted with cases where the outcome in some way or another requires them to issue a decision that is predicated, to varying to degrees, on a theological question upon which there is some debate. While in American law the ostensibly simple answer to this question is simply that the Constitution prohibits courts from adjudicating religious questions, the reality is …

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Implied Consent To Religious Institutions: A Primer And A Defense, Michael A. Helfand Dec 2017

Implied Consent To Religious Institutions: A Primer And A Defense, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

One of the recent fault lines over religious liberty is the scope of protections afforded religiously motivated institutions and corporations. Courts and scholars all seem to agree that such religious institutions deserve some degree of protection. But there remains significant debate over the principles that should guide judicial decisions addressing the circumstances in which religiously motivated institutions should, and in which circumstances they should not, receive the law’s protection.

In this Article, I expound, and defend, my proposed “implied consent” framework for addressing religious institutional claims. Such a framework grounds the authority of religious institutions not in a degree of …

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Beit Din's Gap-Filling Function: Using Beit Din To Protect Your Client, Michael A. Helfand Dec 2013

Beit Din's Gap-Filling Function: Using Beit Din To Protect Your Client, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

This article considers how rabbinical courts play an important gap-filling role by providing parties with a forum to adjudicate a subset of religious disputes that could not be resolved in court. Under current constitutional doctrine, civil courts cannot adjudicate disputes that turn on religious doctrine and practice. By contrast, rabbinical courts can resolve such disputes--and the decisions of rabbinical courts can then be enforced by civil courts even as those same civil courts could not resolve the dispute in the first instance. In this way, rabbinical courts--like other religious arbitration tribunals--fill a void created by constitutional law, ensuring that parties …

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Religion's Footnote Four: Church Autonomy As Arbitration, Michael A. Helfand Dec 2012

Religion's Footnote Four: Church Autonomy As Arbitration, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

While the Supreme Court’s decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC has been hailed as an unequivocal victory for religious liberty, the Court’s holding in footnote four – that the ministerial exception is an affirmative defense and not a jurisdictional bar – undermines decades of conventional thinking about the relationship between church and state. For some time, a wide range of scholars had conceptualized the relationship between religious institutions and civil courts as “jurisdictional” – that is, scholars converged on the view that the religion clauses deprived courts of subject-matter jurisdiction over religious claims. In turn, courts could not adjudicate religious disputes …

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Litigating Religion, Michael A. Helfand Dec 2012

Litigating Religion, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

This article considers how parties should resolve disputes that turn on religious doctrine and practice – that is, how people should litigate religion. Under current constitutional doctrine, litigating religion is generally the task of two types of religious institutions: first, religious arbitration tribunals, whose decisions are protected by arbitration doctrine, and religious courts, whose decision are protected by the religion clauses. Such institutions have been thrust into playing this role largely because the religion clauses are currently understood to prohibit courts from resolving religious questions – that is, the “religious question” doctrine is currently understood to prohibit courts from litigating …

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