Law Commons^™

Opting Out In The Name Of God: Will Lawyers Be Compelled To Handle Same-Sex Divorces?, Bill Piatt

Faculty Articles

In June of 2015, the United States Supreme Court determined by a 5–4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples have a constitutionally guaranteed right to marry. While this represents a momentous victory for homosexuals, many people are still vehemently opposed to the idea. Homosexuality is especially frowned upon in certain religions, including some sects of Christianity. Is it possible that attorneys who decline on religious grounds to provide legal services to same-sex individuals seeking divorces will be ordered to provide that representation? Might those attorneys be sanctioned if they fail to do so? These are both novel and …

Improving The Law School Classroom And Experience Through Prayer: An Empirical Study, David A. Grenardo

Faculty Articles

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” There are approximately fifty religiously affiliated law schools in the United States. As faith-based communities, these law schools can integrate their faiths into the education they provide by, among other things, incorporating in the classroom a central characteristic of most religions – prayer.

This article includes anonymous survey responses from students at four different Catholic law schools across the nation concerning whether the students liked the fact that their professors prayed at the beginning of class. The …

What Is The Matter With Antigone?, Emily A. Hartigan

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

What Hath Faith Wrought? (Book Review), Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

A number of academic lawyers have explored the relationship of religion (and religious belief) and law. Ostensibly starting with the late Harold Berman’s The Interaction of Law and Religion, the “religious lawyering” movement evaluates the role religious faith has in how lawyers practice law. Extended by subsequent works such as Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought, the discussion has expanded beyond the question whether a religious lawyer is a contradiction.

This essay serves as a commentary on Robert F. Cochran’s Faith and Law: How Religious Traditions from Calvinism to Islam View American Law, a compilation of sixteen essays from legal academics …

Why We Do The Things We Do? The Role Of Ethics In Water Resource Planning, Amy Hardberger

Faculty Articles

Water provides a natural framework in the role of ethics because ethical issues are present in every facet of water management. The value of water and the creation of ethics dictate decisions regarding water resource management. Value can be assessed from factors including happiness, well-being, or intrinsic value. Once a value is assessed, obligations that dictate actions regarding this issue are generated, and an ethic is created.

Various domestic and international policies have, both explicitly and implicitly, called for a human right to water. The presence of domestic and international policies that recognize or protect a person’s right to water …

Disturbing The Peace, Emily A. Hartigan

Faculty Articles

When concerns of race, gender, and orientation intersect with the Catholic faith and church, the interaction can prove painful and difficult. Experiences of feeling judged or condemned ricochet between camps, the members of each desperate to defend that which they feel is inherent to them, to their identities and self-understanding. But despite the damage that Catholicism can and has inflicted by its striction and history, it retains a mode of outreach to the disaffected—La Virgen, dark and female and still only just coming to be understood. She is controversial and always subject to attempts at political manipulation, but she is …

Multiple Unities In The Law, Emily A. Hartigan

Faculty Articles

In a world newly in touch with its diversity, ethics must struggle with the impact difference has on coherence. There is a crucial dilemma more profound than how to avoid violating the canons of ethics, or how to dodge disciplinary proceedings. For the lawyer in a world of plural ethics—the dilemma posed by the primary tension in ethics today between reason and spirit.

There are multiple unities of meaning in which a lawyer works, a sort of multijurisdictionalism. These multiple unities, these many worlds, are emblematic of a time in which people are recognizing that multiculturalism is not a trendy …

Ordinary Sacraments, Emily A. Hartigan

Faculty Articles

Richard Parker is a true force in constitutional thought, and his Populist commitment finds fertile landscape. However, there is something missing from his account of populism—the role of reflection and the fear of God in human affairs. Parker never deals with the fact that “the people” believe in God. Despite the intellectualist drive to separate God from politics, most Americans do not maintain such a wall. Whether under a stultifying separationist doctrine or in a more open pluralism, the people are God-fearing in an increasingly fractured and fascinating way—they are recognizably, fundamentally religious. Parker advocates being in touch with what …

Mueller V. Allen: A Fairer Approach To The Establishment Clause, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

The decision upheld by the United States Supreme Court in Mueller v. Allen helds a new dawn in establishment clause jurisprudence. This five-to-four decision, written for the majority by Justice Rehnquist, upheld a Minnesota statute permitting taxpayers to deduct the tuition, textbook, transportation, and instructional material expenses of their children when calculating their state tax liability. By this decision, the Court has cleared the way for an accommodation between church and state that more equitably recognizes the principles and values that the religion clauses were intended to protect.

Following a review of the history of the establishment clause, tuition tax …