Religion Law Commons^™

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 …

White Christian Nationalism & Antisemitism: A True Threat, Doron M. Kalir

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

For a short period following World War II, it seemed like the World is aspiring to become a better place. Article I of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights reflected that notion, announcing that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” That was the closest we, as a family of nations, ever came to fulfill the “dream of reason”—a state where we all work together, free from hate and prejudices, towards a common goal: A better world …

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

Law Faculty Scholarship

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.

Command And Consequence: Reassessing King David’S Military Decisions In The Uriah Affair – A Legal And Ethical Analysis In The Context Of Modern Legal Theory, Jonathan Hasson, Oded Mudrik, Abraham Tennenbaum

Touro Law Review

This study critically reevaluates King David's command in 2 Samuel 11 and 12 to place Uriah the Hittite in the battle's frontlines, resulting in his death, through the contemporary lens of military law and ethics. By juxtaposing the ancient narrative with modern legal doctrines, it investigates the complexities of command responsibility and the intersection of personal motives in military orders. Focusing on the interplay between David's personal entanglements with Bathsheba and his official capacity as a military leader, the analysis navigates the ethical quandaries and legal ramifications of his decisions. This piece methodically dissects the Biblical text and contemporaneous legal …

Dignity, Equality, And The Duty Of Assistance, Itamar Rosensweig, Shua Mermelstein

Touro Law Review

Jewish law obligates each person to assist and respect his fellow. This includes a wide-range of interpersonal obligations, such as the duty to support the less advantaged, the duty to rescue from danger, and the duty to “love your fellow” and promote his success. In this article, we argue that these interpersonal obligations are rooted in Judaism’s conception of the person as endowed with dignity. This dignity is grounded in the notion of tzelem Elokim, in the metaphysical conception of man created in the divine image (Imago Dei). We argue that this metaphysical basis for human dignity imposes duties upon …

Private Religious Schools And Disability Discrimination, Kevin Timpe

Touro Law Review

In the lead-up to the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), religious institutions and organizations lobbied to be exempt. Because they were successful in securing an exemption to most of the ADA’s requirements, religious private schools maintain the legal right to refuse admission to disabled students or to fail to give them various legal protections. After considering the arguments given in its favor, the paper critiques this exemption on moral grounds. It then suggests that these considerations should lead to a reexamination of the legal right such schools have to discriminate against disabled individuals, especially in those cases …

How To Teach A Course On Land Use And Anti-Jewish Discrimination, Michael Lewyn

FIU Law Review

In 2022, I was asked to teach a one-week mini-course within a broader course on “Structural Barriers and the Pursuit of Equity,” a course focusing on various forms of structural discrimination The course is typically taught by over a dozen professors from various parts of Touro University, each of whom teaches for a week on a different topic. I chose to teach on issues related to land use law (because my scholarship focuses on that area) and in particular how land use law has been used by and against traditionally observant Jews (because that is the religious tradition I am …

Sabbath Accommodations As A Civil Right: History, Title Vii, And The Path To Groff V. Dejoy, Isaac May

FIU Law Review

In Groff v. DeJoy, which concerned a Christian Sabbath observer, Jewish groups were vindicated by the Court’s overturning Hardison v. Transworld Airlines and strengthening Title VII’s protections for religion, particularly around employees’ Sabbath observance. This article positions Groff within the history of Jewish efforts to secure employment protections for Sabbath worship. Efforts to secure Sabbath accommodations were an outgrowth and expansion of early twentieth-century efforts to ensure Jews were protected by public accommodation laws and a product of attempts by litigators such as Leo Pfeffer to end mandatory Sunday closing laws in the mid-twentieth century. Sabbath accommodations became a critical …

Never Again: Zionism And The Jewess, Rona Kaufman

FIU Law Review

The State of Israel was established, in part, to ensure that Jews would never again be killed with impunity. More specifically, the State of Israel was established to ensure that never again would Jewish women and girls be systematically raped, assaulted, violated, and mutilated in a pogrom-like attack against the Jewish people. It is well known that the sweep of history connects Jews with the land of Israel from ancient times to today and serves as an important foundation for political Zionism. Less understood is that the atrocities against Jewish women and girls, committed over thousands of years and across …

Lessons For The Trump Administration From The Biden U.S. National Strategy To Counter Antisemitism, Lili Levi

FIU Law Review

In May 2023, the Biden Administration issued the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism with a goal of hindering further normalization of antisemitism by increasing public awareness of antisemitism and highlighting positive Jewish contributions to America. Recent events, however, particularly the social and political upheaval over protests of the war in Gaza, have led to public contestation over Israel, increased instances of antisemitism, and the partisan politicization of Jewish issues. All this has raised questions about whether the National Strategy's assumptions about public attitudes, the viability of antisemitism awareness initiatives, and the possibility of whole-of-society agreement on countering antisemitism …

Race Without Racism: Religious School Curricula And The Race-Neutral Legacy Of Brown, Vania Blaiklock

Scholarly Articles

Current conversations about race and equity curricula in primary and secondary education exclude examining religious curricula because of their private classification. Yet, this omission prevents us from exploring how religious curricula might mirror the legal transformation of Brown’s racial equality legacy to constitutional race neutrality. This Article brings religious curricula into these conversations by specifically linking the Court’s race-neutral transformation of Brown to the way religious curricula frame discussions about race without racism. Throughout the Article, I argue that the Court’s transformation of Brown is not just a top-down legal framework but also a bottom-up educational ideology. By making …

From Ambiguity To Accountability: The Case For A Legal Definition Of Antisemitism In Academia, Andrea Martin

Faculty Scholarship

Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, U.S. college campuses experienced a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents, driven by an antizionism movement aimed at demonizing and delegitimizing the Jewish state and its supporters. A congressional investigation found that antisemitism persisted at prominent universities because administrators repeatedly failed to denounce antizionist conduct that functions as a vehicle for harassment of Jewish students and neglected to enforce their own nondiscrimination policies. The congressional committee, as well as several university antisemitism task forces, identified antizionism as a primary driver of campus antisemitism and strongly recommended that university leaders recognize and address …

Patriarch Kirill Of Moscow And All Russia: A True Patriarch Or A False One, A Senior Cleric Or A Senior Politician Of The Russian Federation? The Russian Patriarch And The War In Ukraine, Dilyan Nikolchev

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This paper focuses on the behavior of the current Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill (Gundyaev) in the context of the Russia’s military aggression against sovereign Ukraine – a religious leader who fully supports the war policy of the Kremlin. The pro-war and pro-Putin views and messages of Patriarch Kirill proved him in the eyes of the Orthodox world more as a false Patriarch and a politician than as the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church. To a large extent, the Russian political narratives and ideology of the “Russian Peace” and “Holy Rus” doctrine are a product of the senior leadership of …

The Judicial System Of Kazakh Beys In Central Asia: Shari'a And Customary Law, Dinmuhammad Smanov Kul, Alau Adilbayev, Rakhimov Abdukhalik, Yerzhan Kalmakhan

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This study examines the judicial practices of Kazakh beys in 18th–19th century Central Asia, emphasizing their application of Islamic fiqh alongside traditional Kazakh customary law (adat). In a decentralized and nomadic society, beys acted as hybrid legal authorities, integrating Shari’a principles – such as ‘adl (justice), maslaha (public interest), and ijtihad (independent reasoning) with local customs to resolve disputes over property, family matters, and blood feuds. Through historical-legal analysis of oral traditions, archival documents, and ethnographic accounts, the research demonstrates how beys preserved Islamic legal norms while adapting them to practical realities, creating a dynamic model of legal …

Private Religious Schools And Disability Discrimination, Kevin Timpe

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

In the lead-up to the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), religious institutions and organizations lobbied to be exempt. Because they were successful in securing an exemption to most of the ADA’s requirements, religious private schools maintain the legal right to refuse admission to disabled students or to fail to give them various legal protections. After considering the arguments given in its favor, the paper critiques this exemption on moral grounds. It then suggests that these considerations should lead to a reexamination of the legal right such schools have to discriminate against disabled individuals, especially in those cases …

Religious Liberty, Public Accommodations, And Non-Discrimination: A Rapidly Emerging Injustice, Gordon Babst

Political Science Faculty Books and Book Chapters

The decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., suggested to many that the scope of religious liberty was in a principled, logical way expanded to include free expression rights of corporate entities. It is concerning that many champion the decision as a basis for expanding religious exemptions to non-discrimination law as regards public accommodations, especially since the same reasoning that is being used with respect to the contemporary target of discrimination based in religious belief—American citizens who happen to be in a sexual minority—would apply by analogy, as it once did explicitly, to racial minorities. Unfortunately, given the …

Foundations Of The Right Of Charitable Uses, Adam J. Macleod, Mark David Hall

Scholarly Articles

In recent years, municipalities around the United States have enacted ordinances that prohibit or restrict food-sharing in public places. These ordinances make it difficult for charitable souls to share food with those most in need. In one case, a town in Arizona arrested a woman under an ordinance that prohibits sharing food in public for charitable purposes.
The closest analogs to these laws are the English anti-almsgiving acts of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. One must look that far back in history because infringements of the right of charitable uses of property are exceedingly rare. Indeed, throughout the history of …

Agreeing To Disagree: Abortion Jurisprudence In Jewish And Islamic Law, Rabea Benhalim

Publications

This Article challenges the prevailing perception that religious people and religious legal traditions are anti-abortion. While this may be true within certain conservative Christian perspectives, this perception is an inaccurate representation of Jewish and Muslim Americans and their respective legal traditions. Both the Jewish and Islamic legal traditions offer a range of nuanced positions on abortion. Furthermore, diverse opinions of Jewish and Islamic abortion jurisprudence inform a variety of topics salient to the current legal debate in the United States. This range of opinions includes strict limitations on abortion, circumstantial legality, and general permissibility. Scholars from both traditions engaged in …

Religious Freedom And The Fertilized Egg, Rabea N. Benhalim

Publications

Anti-abortion activism and litigation have challenged established caselaw on the legality of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the legal treatment of IVF fertilized eggs. These challenges rely on conservative Christian ideologies that full personhood occurs at fertilization. Litigation has primarily arisen out of wrongful death suits and divorce proceedings, wherein a party either has destroyed or seeks to dispose of frozen blastocysts. Some legislatures now seek to regulate the treatment of IVF fertilized eggs vis-á-vis legislation, as politicians increasingly seek to ban any destruction of human fertilized eggs by legally defining human life as beginning at fertilization. However, the question …

Religion In Public Schools: Constitutional Revolution In Action, Noah R. Feldman

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Religious Beliefs, Unemployment Benefits, And Constitutional Choices: Flynn V. Maine Employment Security Commission, Mary Ann Lynch

Maine Law Review

The last decade has seen a growing number of individuals adopt fundamentalist, "born-again" Christianity. For these people, religion requires more than observance of a sabbath, weekly services, or financial commitment. Fundamentalist religion often requires its adherents to spread their religious beliefs with missionary zeal. Religion may be a constant preoccupation and as such, is brought into the work place. Thus, there is potential for conflict between the needs and demands of employers and the exercise of one's religion. While the free exercise clause of the first amendment may not always provide protection for employees against employers' requirements, it nevertheless serves …

Corpus Linguistics At The U.S. Patent And Trademark Office, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

BYU Law Review

This Article examines the intersection of corpus linguistics and patent law. It introduces the foundations of corpus linguistics and its application to the law and advances the potential for its application to patent examination at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Historically, the disciplines of corpus linguistics and patent law did not intersect until scholars began to consider the application of corpus linguistics to patent litigation for interpretation of terms in patent claims. Interpretation of legal language provided by corpus linguistics and applied to patent examination at the USPTO has yet to be addressed and is a novel …

A Proxy For Piety: A Closer Look At Religious Cost In The Substantial Burden Inquiry, Philip Andrew B. Wines

Fordham Law Review Online

This Comment discusses whether the Establishment Clause and “religious question” doctrine prohibit courts from considering the subjective religious harm suffered by free exercise claimants when determining if laws impose a “substantial burden” on the claimant, as defined by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). It explores a dilemma that courts are presently facing. They must choose either to wade into constitutionally perilous theological debates to decide cases on their merits, or to defer to free exercise claimants on their own assertions of substantial burden and risk swallowing up the law …

Dejoyful Noise: Reimagining Title Vii Religious Accommodations In The Wake Of Groff V. Dejoy, Mikko Biana

Brooklyn Law Review

The prominence of religion in everyday life has dwindled in recent decades. The number of Americans who attend weekly religious services continues to decline, and wide swaths of the population now profess irreligion altogether. Despite this trend, constitutional mandates such as the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses remind society that throughout history and into the present day, the relationship between religion and state has been and always will be ripe for discussion. The 2023 Supreme Court decision Groff v. DeJoy exemplifies this characterization. Prior to Groff, the Court primarily relied on a 1977 case, Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, …

Statutory Religious Accommodation In Employment And The Problems Of Judicial Intent And Outcome, George Wright

Texas A&M Law Review

The Groff v. DeJoy case unhappily, but inevitably, generates a variety of realistically unresolvable fundamental problems in typical statutory religious accommodation cases. Perhaps even more important, though, are the unintended and perverse results of Groff’s placing a generally heavier burden of religious accommodation on employers. The Groff standard indeed incentivizes the bringing of more religious discrimination cases, and both the winning and losing of such cases by religious claimants. But our adversarial cultural circumstances, including the typical inseparability of religion, politics, and culture, crucially affect the actual, but unintended, results of judicial reforms. The Groff rule is likely to …

The Role Of Islam In The Prevention Of Suicide: An Analytical Study Of The Reasons Behind Suicide Prevention In Islam, Hamza Hammad

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

Objectives: The purpose of this research is to extrapolate and analyze the causes leading to suicide prevention in the Islamic religion, by deducing the relationship between the level of Islamic religiosity and mental health, specifically suicide, then extrapolating the factors or components that lead to suicide prevention in the Islamic religion, as well as analyzing the Islamic faith’s position on Suicide, then inferring the effect of belief in fate and destiny on psychological security and in reducing suicide. Methods: This study follows the inductive and analytical approach, based on extrapolating studies and statistics about suicide rates in the world as …