First Amendment Commons^™

Free Speech: The Status Of The First Amendment, Martin B. Margulies

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contexts Of The Political Role Of Religion: Civil Society And Culture, David Hollenbach S.J.

San Diego Law Review

This Article argues that we need to frame the question of the relation of religion to public life in a way that goes beyond discussion of the direct impact of religious convictions on policy choices. The Article considers religion's public influences, such as its influence on the multiple communities and institutions of civil society and on the public self-understanding of a society called culture. In considering these influences, the author offers a new perspective on the role of religious belief in the decisions of those who draft legislation, reach judicial decisions, administer the domestic and foreign affairs of the nation, …

Book Review. Choosing The Dream: The Future Of Religion In American Public Life By F. M. Gedicks And R. Hendrix, Daniel O. Conkle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Government Regulation Of Religiously Based Social Services: The First Amendment Considerations, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

A daunting welter of variables confronts anyone who sets out to systematize the First Amendment's effect on the government's role in regulating social services operated by religious organizations. The task is further complicated because the regulations in question often were promulgated as a consequence of the monitoring that inevitably accompanies government spending on private-sector welfare programs. The most suitable methodology should take into account: 1) the nature of the organizations that are the object of the government's regulation or program of aid; 2) the interrelationship between government and religious organizations that results from the regulation or aid; and 3) the …

Free Speech And School Governance In The Wake Of Hazelwood, Rosemary C. Salomone

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The Supreme Court's 1988 decision in Hazelwood School District v. KuhImeier upholding public school officials' authority to censor material in a high school student newspaper sent immediate shock waves throughout the educational and legal communities. The Court's sweeping language in Hazelwood moved far beyond the narrow issue of school newspaper censorship. It even moved beyond the question of appropriate or acceptable speech in public secondary schools. It was clear that Hazelwood could have far-reaching consequences for student rights, school governance, and the scope of official authority to make curricular decisions that reflect the values of the local community.

Some …

A Constitutional Right Of Religious Exemption: An Historical Perspective, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Did late eighteenth-century Americans understand the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution to provide individuals a right of exemption from civil laws to which they had religious objections? Claims of exemption based on the Free Exercise Clause have prompted some of the Supreme Court's most prominent free exercise decisions, and therefore this historical inquiry about a right of exemption may have implications for our constitutional jurisprudence. Even if the Court does not adopt late eighteenth-century ideas about the free exercise of religion, we may, nonetheless, find that the history of such ideas can contribute to our contemporary analysis. …

Protecting Religious Liberty: Judicial And Legislative Responsibilities, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Is the First Amendment hostile to religion? Answering that question requires at least the usual professorial ration of caveats. I assure you that I will directly answer the question. I submit, though, that the caveats constitute a more important, deeper response, a response which questions the question itself. Were I more radical in my intellectual sympathies, I would propose to deconstruct the question.

The First Amendment, Burt Neuborne

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Beguiled: Free Exercise Exemptions And The Siren Song Of Liberalism, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

From all the talk about our religious pluralism—how extensive, indelible, inarbitrable it is—one would expect that establishing one definition of religious liberty would be the mother of all civic disturbances. Wrong. We have a common definition of religious liberty. I can demonstrate our agreement with one exhibit: the immensely broad based denunciation of the 1990 Supreme Court decision, Employment Division v. Smith. Two counsellors at a drug rehabilitation center (Alfred Smith and Galen Black) appealed Oregon’s denial of unemployment benefits. Oregon cited the “misconduct” that led to their discharges. Their “misconduct” consisted of using the hallucinogenic drug peyote. Peyote …

Religious Free Speech Rights Of Students In Public Schools: The Educator's Dilemma, Rosalie Levinson

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Judicial Postscript To The Church-State Debates Of 1989: How Porous The Wall, How Civil The State?, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

This work is a continuation of the debate regarding the Establishment Clause. The focus lies with Justice O’Connor’s concurrence in County of Allegheny v. ACLU and how this opinion harkens back to a concept shared by Jefferson and Madison, that the establishment clause is designed to prevent government favoritism.

Original Intent, History And Levy’S Establishment Clause. Book Review Of The Establishment Clause: Religion And The First Amendment, By Leonard W. Levy, Ruti Teitel

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

First Freedom: Religion And The Bill Of Rights, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This volume is a collection of seven papers delivered at a symposium assembled in April 1989 upon the occasion, almost two hundred years hence, of the passage of the Bill of Rights by the First Congress. The unifying theme is stated to be the historical context of both Religion Clauses in the First Amendment, but the authors are driven primarily by Establishment Clause concerns. The Thrust of the essays deal with the originalism advanced during the years of Reagan Administration, and nonpreferentialism comes in for particular criticism, both pejoratively characterized as that "growing clamor".

The Secular Meaning Behind The Lemon Test: Lynch V. Donnelly

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Toward A General Theory Of Church-State Relations And The First Amendment, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Although government intervention in religious affairs is a new and understandably worrisome experience for many American churches, history instructs us that the confrontation is not novel. We can find some comfort in the fact that this double wrestle of state with church and state with individual believers is a perennial match. After all, it has been nearly sixty years since a brutish measure in Oregon making parochial school education unlawful had to be sidelined by the United States Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters.' Over forty-five years ago the Supreme Court decided Lovell v. City of Griffin, snuffing …

Establishment Clause Limits On Governmental Interference With Religious Organizations, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

In this article it will be argued that the establishment clause, properly viewed, functions as a structural provision regimenting the nature and degree of involvement between government and religious associations." The degree of involvement should be a limited one, although it is clear that the interrelationship need not nor cannot be eliminated altogether. Although the degree of desired separation has proven to be a continuing controversy, the goal of separation is not so divisive. The aim of separation of church and government is for each to give the other sufficient breathing space. The ordering principle is reciprocity in which "both …

Reinterpreting The Religion Clauses: Constitutional Construction And Conceptions Of The Self, Susan H. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The first amendment guarantees freedom from "law[s] respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The apparent tension between the two clauses of this provision has generated judicial confusion and scholarly disagreement. The perceived conflict between the religion clauses is the product of a particular understanding of what is most fundamental about human identity and the human situation - an understanding that derives from classical liberal political theory and that assumes a sharp division between the individual and his community. This Note proposes an alternative to the liberal conception of human identity, one that encompasses both the …

Civil Liberties: Adherence To Established Principles, Ivan E. Bodensteiner, Rosalie Levinson

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Irrelevance Of The Constitution: The Religion Clauses Of The First Amendment And The Supreme Court, Philip B. Kurland

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Obscenity, The Law And Religion, Thomas A. Long

IUSTITIA

The long history of the relation between Western religion and secular law is both interesting and complex.' In what follows I shall discuss one current social issue which is illustrative of this relation,namely, the relatively recent legal-moral controversy over obscenity.

The Forum Of Conscience: Applying Standards Under The Free Exercise Clause, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

The 1973 Supreme Court decision in Wisconsin v. Yoder reenforced and amplified the Court's earlier holding in Sherbert v. Verner that the free exercise clause of the first amendment requires the state to render substantial deference to religiously motivated behavior in the application of its laws and regulatory schemes. In this article, Mr. Marcus traces the evolving standards of free exercise doctrine and observes that the "balancing test" which has resulted from that evolution requires still further refinement to give religious freedom its full constitutional due. The author then illustrates how the new standards of free exercise might be applied …

Parochiad And Prayer: A Perplexing Problem, William R. Fifner

Cleveland State Law Review

This paper is limited to a chronological examination of decisions of the United States Supreme Court involving aid to parochial education, an exploration of possible future aids, and inquiry into the question whether the extent of present aid and of possible future aid indicates that parochial schools and the general public are, or will be, on a collision course with respect to the free exercise of religion.

The Warren Court: Religious Liberty And Church-State Relations, Paul G. Kauper

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this Article is to analyze the holdings of the Warren Court under these two clauses in an attempt to assess their significance by reference both to earlier interpretations and to the direction they may give to future development.

Religion And American Constitutions, By Wilber G. Katz, Arthur E. Sutherland

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Meaning Of "Religion" In The School Prayer Cases, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

It is not my purpose here to discuss the possible extensions of the school prayer decisions. Rather, I am concerned only with the thought that the unqualified incorporation of the broad definition of religion into the establishment clause is perhaps the root fallacy in the Court's reasoning. In order to avoid an institutionalization of agnosticism as the official public religion of this country, the Court ought to acknowledge that nontheistic religions are not entitled to such unqualified recognition under the establishment clause as to bar even a simple governmental affirmation that in fact the Declaration of Independence is true when …

Constitutional Law - Separation Of Church And State - Bible Reading In The Public Schools, Frederic F. Brace Jr.

Michigan Law Review

The plaintiff, as a citizen, taxpayer, and parent of school children, sought an injunction to restrain the defendant school board from allowing school teachers to read the Bible aloud to students as required by a Tennessee statute. The plaintiff contended that this practice was offensive to him and in violation of the Tennessee and United States Constitutions. The trial court sustained defendant's demurrer. On appeal, held, affirmed. The statute violates neither constitution because it is not an interference with students' or parents' religious beliefs. Carden v. Bland, (Tenn. 1956) 288 S. W. (2d) 718.