Religion Law Commons^™

Reconsidering Thornton V. Caldor, Christopher C. Lund

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law—Where Does It Fit? Solving The School Board Prayer Puzzle, Austin Reed

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Arizona's Torres V. Terrell And Section 318.03: The Wild West Of Pre-Embryo Disposition, Catherine Wheatley

Indiana Law Journal

In this Note, Part I examines the three main approaches used in other state supreme court decisions to decide pre-embryo disposition disputes, as well as three perspectives on the legal status of the pre-embryo, and compares them with Arizona’s emerging law. Part II summarizes Arizona’s Torres trial court order and opinion and section 318.03. Part III then analyzes whether the Torres orders and Arizona’s new statutory “most likely to lead to birth standard”12 present constitutional issues and concludes that the trial court’s order, if reinstated by the Arizona Supreme Court, and section 318.03 can be challenged on substantive due process …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Legal Scholars In Support Of Equality In Support Of Respondents, Fulton V. City Of Philadelpha, Kyle Velte, David Cruz, Michael Higdon, Anthony Michael Kreis, Shirley Lin, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This Brief of Amici Curiae Legal Scholars in Support of Equality in Support of Respondents filed in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia addresses the propriety of an analogy to race discrimination in public accommodation cases involving sexual orientation discrimination. The race analogy in sexual orientation cases proceeds as follows: Advocates and judges widely agree that courts should, and would, reject a religious exemption claim by a public accommodation—such a foster care agency—seeking to turn away an African-American or interracial couple based on the public accommodation’s religious beliefs that Blacks are inferior to whites or that the races should not mix. …

Religious Accommodation, The Establishment Clause, And Third-Party Harm, Mark Storslee

Faculty Scholarship

In the wake of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, religious accommodation has become increasingly controversial. That controversy has given rise to a new legal theory gaining popularity among academics and possibly a few Supreme Court justices: the idea that the First Amendment's Establishment Clause condemns accommodations whenever they generate anything beyond a minimal cost for third parties.

The third-party thesis is appealing. But this Article argues that there are good reasons to believe it falls short as an interpretation of the Establishment Clause. In its place, the Article offers a new theory for understanding the relationship between costly accommodations and the …

Acts Of Meaning, Resource Diagrams, And Essential Learning Behaviors: The Design Evolution Of Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Articles

Lost & Found is a tabletop-to-mobile game series designed for teaching medieval religious legal systems. The long-term goals of the project are to change the discourse around religious laws, such as foregrounding the prosocial aspects of religious law such as collaboration, cooperation, and communal sustainability. This design case focuses on the evolution of the design of the mechanics and core systems in the first two tabletop games in the series, informed by over three and a half years’ worth of design notes, playable prototypes, outside design consultations, internal design reviews, playtests, and interviews.

Historical Foundations And Enduring Fundamentals Of American Religious Freedom, John Witte Jr.

Faculty Articles

For all of their failures and shortcomings, the eighteenth-century founders did indeed begin on the right “path” toward a free society, and today, Americans enjoy a good deal of religious, civil, and political freedom as a consequence. American principles of religious freedom have had a profound influence around the globe, and they now figure prominently in a number of national constitutions and international human rights instruments issued by political and religious bodies.

To be sure, as Adams predicted, there has always been a “glorious uncertainty of the law” of religious liberty and a noble diversity of understandings of its details. …

Changing The Subject Of Sati, Deepa Das Acevedo

Faculty Articles

Charan Shah's 1999 death was widely considered to be the first sati, or widow immolation, to have occurred in India in over twenty years. Media coverage of the event focused on procedural minutiae-her sari, her demeanor-and ultimately, several progressive commentators came to the counterintuitive conclusion that the ritually anomalous nature of Charan's death confirmed its voluntary, secular, and noncriminal nature. This article argues that the "unlabeling" of Charan's death, like those of other women between 1999 and 2006, reflects a tension between the nonindividuated, impervious model of personhood exemplified by sati and the particularized citizen-subject of liberal-democratic politics in India.

The Modern Architecture Of Religious Freedom As A Fundamental Right, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Light Unseen: The History Of Catholic Legal Education In The United States: A Response To Our Colleagues And Critics, John M. Breen, Lee J. Strang

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Fetal Equality, Shaakirrah R. Sanders

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

I join Carliss Chatman’s call to fully consider the equal protection implications of the conception theory and raise an additional right to which a fetus may be entitled as a matter of equal protection: health care, which implicates state laws that provide civil and criminal exemptions to parents who choose religious healing instead of medical care for their children and minor dependents. The evidence of harm to children from religious healing is well documented. Yet, currently, approximately forty-three U.S. states and the District of Columbia have some type of exemption to protect religious healing parents in civil and criminal cases. …

Saint Paul’S Trial Narrative In Acts: Imperium Rōmānum Vs. Vasileía Tou Theoú, Thomas Simmons

Faculty Publications

Saul of Tarsus (alias Paul) encountered the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus. Thereupon, Paul not only became a follower of "the Way," he went from an aggressive persecutor of early Christians to one of its most intellectual and influential apostles. Towards the end of his life, he went on trial. Saint Paul's trial in first century Judea before Felix and Festus receive a detailed fleshing-out in the Acts of the Apostles. A quasi-prosecutor even briefly appears. But Paul's subsequent legal proceedings in Rome and his execution there are excluded from the narrative. Meanwhile, Acts portrays Christianity as a …

Global Energy Poverty: The Relevance Of Faith And Reason, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

The challenge of energy poverty (EP) primarily confronts the least developed countries (LDCs) of the world, located in Africa and Asia, but is also prevalent within segments of more advanced developing countries in Asia. This article will first delineate the nature of global energy poverty that results in the premature deaths of millions of people and leads to pervasive sickness among many more millions. The article will next sketch the legal and political responses to this problem that have generally applied principles of sustainable development (SD) and the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of 2015 adopted by the General Assembly …

The Law Of The Eruv, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Describes case law governing municipal regulation of the eruv (an artificial enclosure designed to allow observant Jews to carry on the Jewish Sabbath). The article focuses on First Amendment case law, and concludes that a municipality may prohibit eruvin only pursuant to a regulation that is enforced against comparable secular signs.

American Legion V. American Humanist Ass'n: Exempting Longstanding Governmental Religious Displays From Establishment Clause Scrutiny And How The Endorsement Test Could Have Prevented It, M. Allison Hyde

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Economic Analysis Of Jewish Law, Keith Sharfman

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Like any legal system, Jewish law is amenable to economic analysis, both positive and normative. Economic analysis can help to explain how and why the various rules comprising Jewish law arose and persisted over time. It also can facilitate a direct assessment of Jewish law on the merits. In practice, however, it is a mainly positive economic analysis of Jewish law that scholars have emphasized, while normative analysis has, for the most part, been underemphasized.

Take, for example, the application of law and economics to biblical exegesis. The legal-economic work in this field has been largely descriptive rather than …

The Practice Of Law As Christian Discipleship, Nathan Chapman

Scholarly Works

“Can the ordinary practice of law be a religious calling?” In a number of scholarly books and articles, as a teacher, and as a mentor, Robert (Bob) Cochrane has answered this question with a resounding “yes.” This essay, part of a festschrift published in Bob’s honor by the Pepperdine Law Review, engages with his work to propose a framework of Christian ethics for reconceiving the practice of law as a form of Christian discipleship. It argues that Christians should understand the practice of law as participation in government-as judgment, participation that is always fraught with the risks of deceit, injustice, …

Forgotten Federal-Missionary Partnerships: New Light On The Establishment Clause, Nathan Chapman

Scholarly Works

Americans have long disputed whether the government may support religious instruction as part of an elementary education. Since Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Supreme Court has gradually articulated a doctrine that permits states to provide funds, indirectly through vouchers and in some cases directly through grants, to religious schools for the nonreligious goods they provide. Unlike most other areas of Establishment Clause jurisprudence, however, the Court has not built this doctrine on a historical foundation. In fact, in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer (2017), the dissenters from this doctrine were the ones to rely on the founding-era record.

Intriguingly, …

Lgbt Equality, Religious Liberty, And Masterpiece Cakeshop, Dale Carpenter

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

From Political Hebraism And Jewish Law To The Comparative Paradigm, Amos Israel-Vleeschhouwer

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.