Religion Law Commons^™

Let The Sunshine In: Crafting Constitutional Transparency Regulations For Content Moderation, Caitlin Ring Carlson

Seattle University Law Review

In response to public concern about the impact of social media, legislators in some U.S. states have developed laws to regulate the process of content moderation. Many include mandatory transparency and disclosure requirements, some of which courts have already deemed an unconstitutional infringement on social media platforms’ right to free expression. This article explores the parameters for crafting constitutional social media transparency regulations using existing U.S. media policy and insights from recent legal challenges. The resulting analysis identifies content neutral transparency requirements that mandate the disclosure of purely factual, non-controversial information as those most likely to withstand judicial scrutiny. Specifically, …

This Is Not A Game: The Addictive Allure Of Digital Companions, Nizan Geslevich Packin, Karni Chagal-Feferkorn

Seattle University Law Review

Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents have become an inescapable part of modern childhood, reshaping education, leisure activities, entertainment, and social interaction. From AI-powered tutors that adapt to individual learning styles to emotionally responsive chatbots that simulate human companionship, these systems promise unprecedented personalization, cognitive stimulation, and social support. However, these benefits mask significant risks that remain unregulated and inadequately addressed.

Although adults are also susceptible to forming deep emotional bonds with AI companions—often trusting them as if they possessed genuine understanding and empathy—children are particularly vulnerable. Their misplaced trust can more severely distort social development, weaken critical thinking, and foster unhealthy …

An "Exceedingly Persuasive Justification": Affirmative Action As Protected By The Free Exercise Clause, Kristin O'Bryan Pereira

Pepperdine Law Review

In 2023, the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard (SFFA) decision effectively outlawed the use of race-based affirmative action programs in higher education, holding that such programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Meanwhile, the current Supreme Court has been unprecedently friendly to claimants seeking Free Exercise Clause protection from government restraints on religious exercise. The intersection between these two areas of law has implications for a category of schools not explicitly considered in the SFFA decision—private, religious schools …

Missouri's Law Of Constitutional Interpretation, Michael L. Smith

UMKC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Right To "Health Care Freedom" In State Constitutions, Quinn Yeargain

UMKC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Faith Misplaced: Working Out The Roles Of Faith And Law In Pluralist Democracies, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In pluralist democracies where legal and constitutional rights to freedom of conscience and religion exist, one can too readily-and sometimes, misguidedly - conclude that faith-based arguments, or arguments made by those who are religiously motivated, have little or no place in lawmaking. For example, it maybe thought that free and equal citizens have been accorded the freedom (not) to profess and practice a religion. Given the ubiquity of law and its impact on all, including those without a religion, if the religious were to shape the law from religious perspectives, freedom of others may be negatively impacted or rendered nugatory …

Establishment Of The Macedonian Orthodox Church After World War Ii And The Reaction Of The Serbian Orthodox Church (Historical-Canonical Research), Ivan Yovchev

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The history of the Orthodox Church is abundant with examples of the emergence of Local Churches and their “path to the church diptychs.” Contemporary church history also provides numerous canonical cases of individual Local Churches striving for independence. Such efforts include those of the Orthodox faithful in the Republic of North Macedonia, who seek church recognition and independence in the organization and governance of their ecclesiastical diocese. The period examined in this article is marked by numerous events and dynamic developments that have significantly influenced the relationship between the Macedonian and Serbian Churches. The content of this article is primarily …

The Fathers Have Eaten Sour Grapes: History Is The Wrong Test For Establishment Clause Questions In Public Schools, Abigail Riddle

Arkansas Law Review

The old quip goes, “As long as there are math tests, students will pray in the schools.” There is, however, a distinction between private and public prayers; the former allows religious students to find peace and comfort in a moment of anxiety, and the latter openly divides the religious majority from the religious and nonreligious minority, ostracizing the minority and exacerbating their nerves. This Note examines the constitutionality of religious exercises initiated by public school faculty and staff at public education’s founding, arguing that the special considerations present when considering prayer in these contexts are too important to be limited …

Religious Exemptions To Anti-Discrimination Law: Children's Rights In The Constitutional Calculus, Tanya Washington, Catherine Smith, Robin Walker Sterling

Scholarly Articles

Increasingly, religious actors in the public sphere--whether in the provision of goods and services (Masterpiece Cakeshop) or in government contracting (Fulton)--are simply invoking a person's sexual orientation as inconsistent with their religious tenets to benefit from a legal doctrine that shields them from the requirement that they offer an underlying rationale for LGBTQ discrimination. Over the past decade, we have filed amicus briefs in United States Supreme Court cases advancing children's constitutional rights, including briefs providing a check on these religious-based arguments when they adversely impact children's rights in the familial and child regulation contexts and …

Voting Matters: Materiality Considerations And The Shareholder Vote, Renee M. Jones

Seattle University Law Review

For the shareholder franchise to have meaning, shareholders must have access to relevant information to inform their voting decisions. The securities laws’ disclosure requirements play an essential role in informing the shareholder vote.

This Essay focuses on the question of the materiality of information in the context of shareholder voting. It addresses the question of whether ESG-related information is material, positioning the materiality inquiry within the context of shareholders’ voting decisions. It explores the definition of materiality with a focus on the “reasonable investor” concept embedded within the definition. The Essay argues that the implicit expectations of many commentators that …

Through A Glass Darkly: How Securities Disclosures Give A Distorted View Of The Economy, Gerald F. Davis

Seattle University Law Review

Our understanding of the American economy often relies on stylized facts derived from mandatory disclosures by listed corporations. Data vendors like Standard & Poor’s vacuum up 10Ks and proxy statements into databases, and scholars distill these into tentative maps. This may have been adequate for a postwar economy centered on asset-heavy manufacturers, but it is increasingly out of step with an information-based economy. Companies listed on the stock market are fewer in number and less representative than they were, light in tangible assets and people, and heavy on IP. Basic facts such as what industry they are in are increasingly …

An Ethnography Of Love Jihad: The Governance Of Interfaith Marriages In Times Of Hindutva, Snehal Sharma

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

My doctoral research focuses on the violations of human and citizenship rights of women and religiously marginalized communities (based on religious differences) in the backdrop of right-wing movements in India. I assess the Hindu nationalist propaganda named “love jihad” to demonstrate the way it weaponizes religious exogamy. This propaganda legitimizes violence against Indian religious minorities and women as it claims that marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men are acts of terrorism against Hindus with the sole aim of increasing the Muslim population using Hindu women's bodies. I have used ethnographic research methods to explore the legal process of interfaith …

Church Autonomy, Textualism, And Originalism: Scotus’’S Use Of History To Give Definition To Church Autonomy Doctrine, Carl H. Esbeck

Marquette Law Review

Church autonomy is a First Amendment doctrine altogether distinct from the more familiar causes of action brought under the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. The principle of church autonomy was first recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in the post-Civil War case Watson v. Jones, holding that civil courts must not be drawn into resolving religious questions or settling disputes over church polity. And early this century, in the unanimous decision Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, the theory of church autonomy took on its most fully developed form as a constitutional immunity …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Seattle University Law Review

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Corporate Governance Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

The State has always regulated the intra-firm communications that make corporate governance possible, most commonly by mandating disclosures of information by a corporation to its shareholders. Some such laws are labeled “securities regulation,” but securities regulation is a broad category that extends to speech by actors who are outside the corporate enterprise as well. Also, the conventional securities regulation category does not capture all such laws; other examples, including informationforcing mandates, can be found in state corporate law. This Article uses the term “corporate governance speech” to describe the communications among shareholders, directors, and officers through which corporate governance is …

Dark Accounting Matter, Colleen Honigsberg

Seattle University Law Review

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price-to-book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80% appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

Some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset …

The Employees’ Dilemma: Balancing Internal Reporting, Whistleblowing, And Insider Trading Risks, Geeyoung Min

Seattle University Law Review

The Essay examines how recent developments in insider trading regulations and whistleblower reward programs can lead to unintended and counterproductive results of discouraging employees from using internal reporting channels within corporate compliance programs. While the presence of a robust and well-functioning corporate compliance program is a critical factor both in mitigating the level of public enforcement actions against companies and in protecting corporate managers from liability in private litigation, these programs often provide little incentive for employees to report potential misconduct internally.

Corporate compliance programs are designed to promote the upward information flow within the company, which is essential for …

How The Antidiscrimination Law Of Commercial Transactions Really Works, Helen Norton

Seattle University Law Review

A variety of businesses now cite 303 Creative when seeking First Amendment protection for their refusal to serve certain customers based on those customers’ protected class status. How this litigation will play out remains to be seen. But future courts need not, and should not, repeat the 303 Creative Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions actually works.

Part I of this Essay explains the Court’s longstanding understanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions, and then describes the Court’s failure to engage with this precedent in 303 Creative. Part II then identifies the 303 Creative decision’s …

Understanding The Big Three’S Wavering Support Of Environmental And Social Shareholder Proposals, Jeff Schwartz, Jefferson Jensen

Seattle University Law Review

Because of their substantial equity portfolios, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street (the Big 3) are central players in corporate governance. It is, therefore, critical to understand how they vote. One puzzle is that their support for shareholder proposals on environmental and social matters appears to waiver. In 2020, for instance, BlackRock supported 11.1% of environmental proposals at S&P 500 firms. In 2021, it seemingly reversed course, supporting 55.2%. It then flipped again, supporting 32.1% in 2022. Such statistics suggest that the Big 3 are constantly changing their views on these topics. This Article seeks to better understand whether this is …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Dignitatis Humanae, Francis J. Beckwith

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Sixty years ago the Second Vatican Council issued the document Dignitatis Humanae, a declaration on religious freedom. At the time it was considered to be the Catholic Church's most significant concession to the modern world, though the Council argued that the declaration was, given the political and religious realities at the time, a legitimate doctrinal development rooted in the Church's most ancient teachings. Its defense of religious liberty relied on widely held and uncontroversial beliefs about human nature, the common good, and the meaning of religion. But since the beginning of the 21st century those beliefs have been challenged …

Right Not To Work: Unions And Title Vii, Seth Oranburg

FIU Law Review

This article explores how Title VII's mandate for religious accommodation conflicts with union seniority rights, as revealed in Groff v. DeJoy. It argues that labor unions often oppose Sabbath accommodations not out of hostility to religion, but to protect bargained-for entitlements. The piece highlights a growing legal tension: whether co-worker burdens count as “undue hardship” under Title VII—a question with major implications for religious liberty in unionized workplaces.

Church Autonomy, Textualism, And Originalism: Scotus's Use Of History To Give Definition To Church Autonomy Doctrine, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Church autonomy is a First Amendment doctrine altogether distinct from the more familiar causes of action brought under the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. The principle of church autonomy was first recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in the post-Civil War case Watson v. Jones, holding that civil courts must not be drawn into resolving religious questions or settling disputes over church polity. And early this century, in the unanimous decision Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, the theory of church autonomy took on its most fully developed form as a constitutional immunity …

Green Dividends: A Case Study In Green Dividends And The Conditions For Private Ordering Solutions, Anne M. Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.

Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green …

Does Climate Disclosure Work To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Emerging Evidence Suggests Cautious Optimism, Cynthia A. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Significant regulatory resources have been spent developing global, voluntary climate and sustainability disclosure standards, such as the TCFD, TNRD, and ISSB’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure standards, or domestically required disclosures, such as in the EU and in the U.S. Thus, it is important to evaluate whether this disclosure, particularly voluntary, qualitative disclosure, will have the power to shift the allocation of capital, will have a significant effect on the management of climate risk within firms, and ultimately will reduce climate change risk and biodiversity loss.

In this Article, several interrelated questions will be discussed. First, what does the empirical evidence …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

A Brief Look At Authoritarianism And Totalitarianism Through A Perspective Of Jewish Law And Tradition, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

A view of authoritarianism and totalitarianism through a perspective of Jewish law and tradition might take various forms and draw upon different approaches, depending on a number of components, including definitions of terms, modes of analysis, and the scope of disciplines and materials to be incorporated. Rather than attempting to present a comprehensive or determinative presentation of historical and philosophical considerations of these issues, this essay will briefly explore conceptual lessons from narrative, political, and legal sources of Jewish tradition, suggesting that Jewish thought recognizes, at once, both the importance of unity and authority and the dangers of authoritarianism and …