Religion Law Commons^™

Verses Turned To Verdicts: Ysl Rico Case Sets A High-Watermark For The Legal Pseudo-Censorship Of Rap Music, Nabil Yousfi

Seattle University Law Review

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap …

Comparative Intellectual Property & Religion, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

IP Theory

This Article introduces religion to comparative IP scholarship and explains how faith-based considerations can enhance it. Comparative IP scholars have extensively studied different IP laws in different jurisdictions, but they seemed to suggest an erroneous view that comparative IP and religion are like two parallel lines without intersection. Building on these scholars’ work, this Article discusses religion’s role in fostering a new vehicle for discussion and a new normative lens with the aim of ascertaining the existence and extent of religion in legal systems, serving as part of the comparison methodology between legal systems with potential for influencing the policy …

A New Great Awakening Of Religious Freedom In America, John Witte Jr.

Faculty Articles

While loud criticisms of religion continue to clatter in the media and the law reviews, the U.S. Supreme Court has led a great awakening of American religious freedom. In more than two dozen cases since 2011, the Court has used both the First Amendment and federal statutes to strengthen the rights of religious organizations to make their own internal decisions about employment and employee benefits. The Court has held that some forms of government aid to religion and religious education are not only permissible under the Establishment Clause, but also required under the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses. The …

Learning Law In Elementary And High School: Innovating Civics Education For A More Empowered Citizenry, Ariel J. Liberman, Michael J. Broyde

Faculty Articles

A principal objective of the public school system in a democracy is to promote societal cohesion by way of preparing students for civic engagement. There exists a founding belief that a democratic nation ought to be composed of educated activists, run by innovators, and kept in check by involved citizens. For, indisputably, the democratic experiment—our values, our institutions—can only be upheld anew with each generation on the backs of critique, reinvention, and reinvigoration. But, as so many have mentioned when discussing the civics education paradigm, the increase in educational opportunities and the marked expansion of our school system has not …

Kaplan V. Independent School District Of Virginia—The Max Kaplan Story, Mike Steenson

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

A License To Discriminate: The Risky Next Step Of Religious Charter Schools, Vania Blaiklock

Scholarly Articles

From 2017 to 2022, the Supreme Court strengthened its First Amendment Free Exercise jurisprudence by deciding that states can provide aid to religious educational institutions through general benefit programs. Six months after the Court’s most recent religious aid case, Carson v. Makin, Oklahoma’s Attorney General stated that he would no longer enforce the nonsectarian provision of the state’s public charter statute because it was unconstitutional under Carson and its progeny. That opinion initiated the application and 2023 approval of the first religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School by Oklahoma’s Virtual Schoolboard. Immediately, state litigation ensued, …

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

The Problem With The Performance Of Alternative Or Military Service Of Ukrainian Adventists In War Conditions, Valentyna Kuryliak Dr

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article discusses the lack of legal documentation faced by Ukraine in defending its borders and national interests, taking into account its historical experience. Attention is drawn to the issues encountered by Protestant churches, especially, but not exclusively, the Seventh-day Adventist Church. A proposal has been made to utilize the volunteer non-combatant potential of churches, regulating it legislatively without involving the Ukrainian court system. The question of alternative (non-combatant) service during mobilization and in times of war in Ukraine is analyzed. The author argues the necessity of preserving the right to alternative service for church members, which according to the …

The Consumer’S Choice To Boycott, Agnes Bresee

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of employees losing their jobs upon voicing their political opinions concerning Israel, Harvard and Columbia law students’ job offers being rescinded upon expressing support for Palestine, and the names and social media profiles of individuals who support Palestine being collected and listed on Canary Mission, such backlash may leave many Americans wondering what form of resistance to settler-colonialist apartheid is acceptable in the twenty-first century. Recently, the movement to collectively boycott brands like Starbucks, which sued its Worker’s Union for a tweet expressing support for Palestine; Disney, which donated money to Israel; and McDonald’s, where a location …

A Different Approach To Agency Theory And Implications For Esg, Jonathan Bonham, Amoray Riggs-Cragun

Seattle University Law Review

In conventional agency theory, the agent is modeled as exerting unobservable “effort” that influences the distribution over outcomes the principal cares about. Recent papers instead allow the agent to choose the entire distribution, an assumption that better describes the extensive and flexible control that CEOs have over firm outcomes. Under this assumption, the optimal contract rewards the agent directly for outcomes the principal cares about, rather than for what those outcomes reveal about the agent’s effort. This article briefly summarizes this new agency model and discusses its implications for contracting on ESG activities.

Overseeing The Administrative State, Jill E. Fisch

Seattle University Law Review

In a series of recent cases, the Supreme Court has reduced the regulatory power of the Administrative State. Pending cases offer vehicles for the Court to go still further. Although the Court’s skepticism of administrative agencies may be rooted in Constitutional principles or political expediency, this Article explores another possible explanation—a shift in the nature of agencies and their regulatory role. As Pritchard and Thompson detail in their important book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court was initially skeptical of agency power, jeopardizing Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)’s ambitious New Deal plan. The Court’s acceptance …

The Sec, The Supreme Court, And The Administrative State, Paul G. Mahoney

Seattle University Law Review

Pritchard and Thompson have given those of us who study the SEC and the securities laws much food for thought. Their methodological focus is on the internal dynamics of the Court’s deliberations, on which they have done detailed and valuable work. The Court did not, however, operate in a vacuum. Intellectual trends in economics and law over the past century can also help us understand the SEC’s fortunes in the federal courts and make predictions about its future.

A Hard Pill To Swallow: The Abysmal Mental Health Standards Of Detained Immigrant Children In The United States, Rama Bankesly

Seattle University Law Review

After setting foot into the U.S., unaccompanied children must learn to navigate academic and legal systems while receiving little support and carrying the heavy burden of effects of trauma on their mental health. They need access to mental health care from qualified professionals, but as this Comment will explain, they systematically fail to receive care, as can be seen in cases like Doe v. Shenandoah Valley Juv. Ctr. Comm’n. In Shenandoah, an unaccompanied child arrived in the U.S. and was placed in a facility that failed to provide remotely adequate mental health care and in fact was subjected …

Students For Fair Admissions: Affirming Affirmative Action And Shapeshifting Towards Cognitive Diversity?, Steven A. Ramirez

Seattle University Law Review

The Roberts Court holds a well-earned reputation for overturning Supreme Court precedent regardless of the long-standing nature of the case. The Roberts Court knows how to overrule precedent. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), the Court’s majority opinion never intimates that it overrules Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court’s leading opinion permitting race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Instead, the Roberts Court applied Grutter as authoritative to hold certain affirmative action programs entailing racial preferences violative of the Constitution. These programs did not provide an end point, nor did they require assessment, review, periodic expiration, or revision for greater …

17th Century Ecumenical Activities Between Ecumenical Patriarchate And The Early Protestant Churches, Svetoslav Ribolov

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The ecumenical activities and contacts between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Protestant churches in the 17th century were largely shaped by two remarkable figures of the Orthodox Church–the Patriarch of Constantinople Cyril Lucaris and Metrophanes Kritopoulos, who later became the Patriarch of Alexandria. Their sincere desire for contact with Protestant theologians, along with their commitment to open dialogue and cooperation was the most important factor in Orthodox-Protestant relations in that era. However, while the political climate in Europe initially allowed for some rapprochement between Christians in the Ottoman Empire and those who had embraced the Reformation, things eventually changed after …

Christian Domination, Ruth Colker

American University Law Review

It is hard to deny that the United States is a Christian nation despite the First Amendment’s promise that the legislature will not establish a religion. The United States is not a Christian nation merely because of the religious beliefs that many people privately hold. It is a Christian nation, in part, because the courts and legislatures have facilitated that development. Moreover, as this Article will argue, Christian favoritism within the political and legal system has developed in sharp contrast to the treatment of Black people, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and disabled people.

This Article explores the development of Christian …

Religious Clause Challenges To Early Abortion Bans, Caroline Mala Corbin

Articles

The substantive due process right to abortion is gone. But other parts of the Constitution may also protect women’s right to control their bodies and live as equals in the United States. This Essay addresses what role the two religion clauses may play in advancing reproductive autonomy. Because religion and reproduction are intertwined, the religion clauses may provide some measure of constitutional protection.

The Establishment Clause bars the government from imposing religion onto those who do not share it. It also forbids the government from taking sides in theological disputes. Early abortion bans not only favor one religious belief on …

No Strings Attached: How Catholic Institutions Prospered At The Expense Of The Administrative State And Patient Autonomy, Lori Freedman, Kimani Paul-Emile

Faculty Scholarship

Catholic hospitals and health systems have proliferated and succeeded in American healthcare; they now operate four of the largest health systems and serve nearly one in six hospital patients. Like other religious entities that Wuest and Last write about in this issue, in their article Church Against State, they have benefited by and supported the long reach of conservative efforts to undermine the administrative state.

Group Ownership And The Ends Of Legal Fictions, Adam J. Macleod

Scholarly Articles

The march of the progressive societies was, as we all know, from status to contract. And now? And now that forlorn old title is wont to introduce us to ever new species and new genera of persons, to vivacious controversy, to teeming life; and there are many to tell us that the line of advance is no longer from status to contract, but through contract to something that contract cannot explain, and for which our best, if an inadequate, name is the personality of the organized group.