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Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Law
Can The Extent Of Religious Freedom Be Measured?, Marcel Stuessi
Can The Extent Of Religious Freedom Be Measured?, Marcel Stuessi
Marcel Stüssi
The purpose of this paper is to develop a method to assess the extent of religious freedom internalized by a country. It represents an effort to provide a framework of possible patterns of the right to individual or collective religious freedom, as well as resulting configurations between religious institutions and the state. With this aim in mind, the paper claims two things. Firstly, that the extent of the constitutionally protected right to religious freedom can be assessed along three dimensions – one measuring the level of state interference with individual religious freedom, another involving the amount of collective religious autonomy …
Nonbelievers, Nelson Tebbe
Nonbelievers, Nelson Tebbe
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
How should courts handle nonbelievers who bring religious freedom claims? Although this question is easy to grasp, it presents a genuine puzzle because the religion clauses of the Constitution, along with many contemporary statutes, protect only religion by their terms. From time to time, judges and lawyers have therefore struggled with the place of nonbelievers in the American scheme of religious freedom. Today, this problem is gaining prominence because of nonbelievers’ rising visibility. New lines of social conflict are forming around them, generating disputes that have already gone legal. In this Article, I argue that no wholesale response will do. …
Religious Freedom In Private Lawsuits: Untangling When Rfra Applies To Suits Involving Only Private Parties, Sara Lunsford Kohen
Religious Freedom In Private Lawsuits: Untangling When Rfra Applies To Suits Involving Only Private Parties, Sara Lunsford Kohen
Sara Kohen
Religious Freedom in Private Lawsuits: Untangling When RFRA Applies to Suits Involving Only Private Parties, for publication discusses when courts should apply the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) in cases in which the federal government is not a party. Congress passed RFRA in reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith. The Court held in Smith that the Constitution does not require religious exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws—those that do not target religion and cover non-religious conduct to the same extent as religious conduct. By contrast, RFRA allows a federal law to substantially burden a religious …
Untold Stories Of Goldman V. Weinberger: Religious Freedom Confronts Military Uniformity, Samuel J. Levine
Untold Stories Of Goldman V. Weinberger: Religious Freedom Confronts Military Uniformity, Samuel J. Levine
Samuel J. Levine
In 1986, the United States Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision ruling that Air Force regulations prohibiting Simcha Goldman from wearing a yarmulke while in uniform did not violate Goldman’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. The Court’s majority opinion, which accepted the government’s assertion that allowing Goldman to wear a yarmulke would unduly upset important military interests, drew unusually harsh responses from both dissenting justices and legal scholars. Yet, upon closer examination, perhaps what stands out most about the events surrounding the Goldman decision is the untold story of the case, which differs in significant …
Smith In Theory And Practice, Nelson Tebbe
Smith In Theory And Practice, Nelson Tebbe
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Employment Division v. Smith controversially held that general laws that were neutral toward religion would no longer be presumptively invalid, regardless of how much they incidentally burdened religious practices. That decision sparked a debate that continues today, twenty years later. This symposium Essay explores the argument that subsequent courts have in fact been less constrained by the principal rule of Smith than advocates on both sides of the controversy usually assume. Lower courts administering real world disputes often find they have all the room they need to grant relief from general laws, given exceptions written into the decision itself and …
Property And Belongingness: Rethinking Gender-Biased Disinheritance, Dr. Shelly Kreiczer Levy, Dr. Meital Pinto
Property And Belongingness: Rethinking Gender-Biased Disinheritance, Dr. Shelly Kreiczer Levy, Dr. Meital Pinto
Dr. Meital Pinto
For centuries, women have been disinherited from family wealth because of cultural traditions and religious rules that suggest their social role does not require an inheritance. Religious or traditionalist testators still adhere to this belief, exercising their testamentary freedom. Moreover, American law respects the testator’s wishes whether they are petty, vindictive or discriminatory. We make the novel argument that the law should not protect gender-biased bequests, as they are contrary to public policy. Our argument centers on a reconfiguration of inheritance in a way that includes its symbolic effect on disinherited relatives, redefining the social, relational and familial role of …
South African Charter Of Religious Rights And Freedoms, I Benson
South African Charter Of Religious Rights And Freedoms, I Benson
Law Papers and Journal Articles
The creation, under Section 234 of the Constitution of South Africa (1996) of a South African Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms, signed by every major religious group in South African as well as representatives of leading South African Constitutional Commissions and others is a development of some importance and potential world significance. It will be, once passed into law, the first Charter created under this section. The civil society initial phase of discussions, consultations, meetings and drafting and re-drafting led to the public signing ceremony at the University of Johannesburg on 21 October 2010. The next phase moves to …
Conference: Laïcité In Comparative Perspective, Elisabeth Zoller, Marc O. Degirolami, Nina Crimm, Javier Martínez-Torrón
Conference: Laïcité In Comparative Perspective, Elisabeth Zoller, Marc O. Degirolami, Nina Crimm, Javier Martínez-Torrón
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.
Religious Freedom, Church-State Separation, & The Ministerial Exception, Carl H. Esbeck, Thomas C. Berg, Kimberlee Wood Colby, Richard W. Garnett
Religious Freedom, Church-State Separation, & The Ministerial Exception, Carl H. Esbeck, Thomas C. Berg, Kimberlee Wood Colby, Richard W. Garnett
Faculty Publications
The Hosanna-Tabor case concerns the separation of church and state, an arrangement that is often misunderstood but is nevertheless a critical dimension of the freedom of religion protected by the First Amendment to our Constitution. For nearly a thousand years, the tradition of Western constitutionalism - the project of protecting political freedom by marking boundaries to the power of government - has been assisted by the principled commitment to religious liberty and to church-state separation, correctly understood. A community that respects - as ours does - both the importance of, and the distinction between, the spheres of political and religious …
The Political (And Other) Safeguards Of Religious Freedom, Richard W. Garnett
The Political (And Other) Safeguards Of Religious Freedom, Richard W. Garnett
Journal Articles
This essay is a contribution to a symposium marking the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s still-controversial decision in Employment Division v. Smith. That decision, it is suggested, should not be read as reflecting or requiring hostility or indifference towards claims for legislatively enacted accommodations of religion. Smith is not an endorsement of religion-blind neutrality in constitutional law; instead, it assigns to politically accountable actors the difficult, but crucially important, task of accommodating those whose religious exercise would otherwise be burdened by generally applicable laws. The essay goes on to suggest several things that must be true of our law …