Religion Law Commons^™

Reimagining Legal Education: The Transformative Power Of Small-Group Instruction, Michael I. Meyerson

Seattle University Law Review

Legal education is failing its students. Those entering their first year of law school have greater anxiety and less developed reading and writing skills than ever before. The traditional large Socratic class, which was never the most effective teaching method, has become increasingly counterproductive.

This Article contends that small-group instruction provides the opportunity for superior teaching, especially for first-year law students. Recent scholarship in active learning, educational psychology, and students’ mental health demonstrates the limitations of the traditional large Socratic class experience. Building on that theoretical foundation and informed by sustained classroom experience, this Article argues that small-group pedagogy more …

The Martha Wright-Reed Act: How The Fcc Took One Step Forward For Communication Equality For Deaf Individuals In Correctional Facilities And How It Could Be Expanded, Ashley Seebold

Seattle University Law Review

For decades, phone companies preyed on incarcerated individuals and their loved ones due to the lack of regulation of jail phone calls.2 In 2021, the average cost of a fifteen-minute jail phone call was about $3.3 In 2022, the average cost rose to $5.74, while some individuals faced an extreme charge of $24.82 for the same amount of time.4 In the early 2000s, consumer advocate and concerned grandmother Martha Wright-Reed called upon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fix the imbalance so she could speak to her incarcerated grandson.5 Eventually, in 2023, the FCC answered her call to action and …

Will Power: Reconciling Halakha With Modern Estate Planning, Amanda Koptyev

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

This Note will begin with an overview of Jewish laws of inheritance, using the biblical story of the daughters of Tzelafchad as a foundation and exploring Torah-based principles such as the double portion for the firstborn son and chukat mishpat. Part II examines Halakhic Wills, explaining their necessity and the mechanisms that make them compatible with Jewish law and secular systems. It also discusses the limitations of relying on the principle of dina d’malchuta dina, the principle that under certain circumstances, Jewish law requires that Jews be governed by the laws of the sovereign state, in cases …

الإجتهاد اللبناني, Poej

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

الإجتهاد اللبناني, Poej

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Mortgage Backed Securities And Islamic Finance Law, Poej

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Pelaksanaan Hukuman Cambuk Di Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Berdasarkan Perspektif Hak Asasi Manusia, Sheila Namira Marchellia

Indonesia Criminal Law Review

The Province of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam imposes caning punishment as a sanction for several criminal offenses. Many parties consider this sanction to be a violation of human rights. This study employs a normative juridical method using statutory and conceptual approaches. Primary legal sources include Law Number 39 of 1999 concerning Human Rights, Qanun Aceh Number 12 of 2025 concerning Jinayat Law, the Indonesian Criminal Code, and Governor Regulation of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Number 10 of 2005 concerning Technical Guidelines for the Implementation of Caning Punishment. Secondary sources were obtained from legal literature and related legal theories. The results of the …

Incorporating Principles And Wisdom From Hospital Chaplaincy And Pastoral Ministry To Create A Ministry Model To Address Social Isolation And Loneliness In Black Churches, Albert A. Kemp

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

To address the growing and widespread epidemic of social isolation and loneliness, with special focus on Black churches, this dissertation developed a program with the following areas of application: 1) how healthcare trained chaplains can coordinate with churches to positively impact individuals identified as lonely and socially isolated with better social and physical health, 2) how principles of chaplaincy and pastoral care can mitigate and intervene competently when such people are identified, and 3) how the project’s model can be organized, taught, and incorporated into existing arenas of church ministry.

The purpose of the project was to create a ministry …

Penitential Systems In The Latin West And Byzantine East, Elijah C. Dodson

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the development and organization of penitential discipline in early medieval Christianity through a comparison of the penitential tradition associated with Theodore of Canterbury in the Latin West and the canons attributed to John the Faster in the Byzantine East. The study focuses on how these texts regulated sexual sin and what their structures reveal about the institutional role of the Church in different historical contexts. The analysis is based on a comparative reading of penitential texts, supported by patristic writings and modern scholarship. By examining how specific categories of sexual misconduct are classified and disciplined, this study …

“Supreme Court, Tear Down This Wall!”: Kennedy V. Bremerton School District And The Erosion Of The Barrier Between Church And State, Ari Allon

NSU Undergraduate Law Journal

This Article conducts a critical examination of Kennedy v. Bremerton’s ruling, which replaced the Lemon test with the historical practices and understandings test. Following a brief background on the Religion Clauses’ jurisprudence, the author contests that the historical practices and understandings test fails to adhere to long-held Supreme Court reasoning behind the creation of the Religion Clauses. This new test is likewise an insufficient framework for determining Establishment Clause violations.

The Article continues with an analysis on the conflicting fact patterns between the majority and dissenting opinions of Kennedy v. Bremerton. The author then discusses the precedential impact …

Vaccines, Religious Liberty, And The Gvr As Doctrinal Signal, Zalman Rothschild

Articles

This Essay proceeds in four Parts. Part I traces the doctrinal baseline, showing that vaccines have long functioned as the limit case for religious liberty. Part II briefly describes the doctrinal changes of the COVID-19 era — the Supreme Court’s expansion of religious equality doctrine, and its emergency-docket denials that left vaccine mandates formally unresolved — before explaining why the GVR in Miller signals a different move: the extension of the religious liberty framework to vaccine mandates, bypassing the comparability analysis that had allowed most courts to sustain them under the equality model. Part III turns to Miller itself and …

Du Statut Juridique De L’Embryon Humain En Droit Libanais, Roula El-Husseini Begdache

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

The legal status of the human embryo has not been specifically studied in Lebanon and is the subject of an uncertain regime resulting from scattered texts and very few court decisions. As the moment marking the beginning of human life remains debated, the recent issues relating to bioethics accompanying scientific advances, particularly in relation to reproductive medicine techniques and their corollaries, including surplus embryos, do not find clear-cut answers in Lebanese law. As scientific progress is at the heart of concerns relating to human life before birth, an abdication of legal experts in favour of doctors and ethics committees can …

L’Hypothèse D’Une Consécration Des « Familles » Naturelles Et Adoptives Par Le Droit Libanais Des Successions Non Musulmanes, Vincent Heuzé

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

The Law of 23 June 1959 has significantly reformed the non-Muslim Inheritance Law, in particular by granting inheritance rights to natural and adopted children. While the very innovative nature of this solution has long justified, by a contrario reasoning, that any inheritance rights be refused to adoptive parents as well as to ascendants and collaterals of natural children, the present article attempts to demonstrate that a reversed interpretation would not be incompatible with the legislation nor with the evolution of ideas in Lebanon.

The Freedom To Be Bound: Anti-Discrimination Theology And The Ministerial Exception, Brooke Girley

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The ministerial exception is generally seen as safeguarding the autonomy of religious institutions in employment decisions, but does it also serve as a roadblock to religious freedom? The recent dismissal of the gender discrimination lawsuit by Rev. Dr. Eboni Marshall Turman against the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church calls into question whether the breadth of the exception promotes religious freedom in all contexts. This article argues that the ministerial exception, although designed to protect religious autonomy, may paradoxically undermine that very autonomy when applied to faith communities, like Abyssinian, that have voluntarily embraced anti-discrimination as part of their theology and praxis. …

Federalist Politics And The Elusive Original Meaning Of The Free Exercise Clause, Jack Thorlin

Catholic University Law Review

Originalism requires interpreting the Constitution by reference to a provision’s original public meaning. But there is very little evidence of original public meaning for some constitutional provisions, most notably the Free Exercise Clause. Originalists have splintered into several different methodological approaches toward the Clause. Justices Scalia and O’Connor staked out opposing originalist views on the Clause thirty years ago in Employment Division v. Smith and City of Boerne v. Flores. In the Roberts Court, some of the conservative justices have attempted to apply a simple textualist interpretation of the Clause, but those efforts have not attracted most of the …

In Defense Of The Ten Commandments In Public Spaces: An Analysis Based On The Supreme Court’S New Judicial Standard, Songfeng Li

Arkansas Law Review

On June 19, 2024, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed legislation mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in all public K-12 schools and colleges in the state. On June 21, 2024, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced his intention to introduce a similar bill in the next legislative session that would require the display of the Ten Commandments in schools. Immediately after the Louisiana law’s enactment, a group of local parents with the help of multiple organizations filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block its implementation. As of today, the district court and appellate court have issued differing rulings. The …

Singh V. Dist. Ct. [State Of Nevada], 142 Nev. Adv. Op. 25 (Apr. 02, 2026), Eden Tesfay

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Under the neutral-principles exception to the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, civil courts are permitted to adjudicate disputes involving religious organizations so long as the issues are determinable without resorting to religious doctrines, practices, or texts.

The Ten Commandments, Stripped Of Slavery, Exodus & Jubilee, Christopher D. Hampson

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The Ten Commandments are back on public classroom walls and in federal court, after several states passed new laws requiring school districts to post the text. As attorneys, judges, and amici debate whether First Amendment law has changed enough since Stone v. Graham in 1980 to allow the posting of the ancient religious text, this Essay comes at the situation from an entirely different angle. The precise text proposed by the states might be a good example of “ceremonial deism,” but it removes biblical law from biblical narrative – and, in doing so, unsets the Ten Commandments from their original …

Religious Minorities And Secular Rights, Joshua C. Mcdaniel

Washington and Lee Law Review

When religious claimants sue to protect their ability to practice their faith, they often invoke legal guarantees that specifically protect religious exercise. Yet historically—and still today—they also rely on secular guarantees like freedom of speech or equal protection. And their victories on these grounds set precedents not just for believers but for everyone. As a result, many rights we now take for granted stem from religious minorities pressing for the ability to preach, proselytize, and publish their religious views. No account of free speech law would be complete, for instance, without considering the pathbreaking decisions won by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Although …

Justice And Peace Shall Kiss: A Comparative Analysis Of Law From Ancient Israel To Modern America, Evan Nix

Honors Theses

Modern legal scholarship frequently attributes American criminal jurisprudence to Roman structures, Enlightenment rationality, and English common law, which obscures the American system’s roots in Hebraic natural-law value frameworks. The present thesis asks: “To what extent does the American criminal justice system embody core values of ancient Hebrew law, and how does such a framework compare to purely secular models regarding societal stability and equity?” A comparative analysis draws on biblical texts of the Torah, Hebrew wisdom literature, and American constitutional and statutory provisions, tracing a genealogy from covenantal laws of ancient Israel to modern American constitutionalism. Findings indicate preservation of …