Religion Law Commons^™

Religious Organizations As Partners In The Global And Local Fight Against Human Trafficking, Mary Graw Leary

Scholarly Articles

This paper explores the role of religious organizations as effective partners in the fight to end modern day slavery. As a crime with both global and local dimensions, trafficking must be combatted with tools that are both global and local. Such tools include the world’s religions and religious organizations. They have been addressing human trafficking for decades, and through their work with the poor, immigrants, and sexually exploited, they possess significant knowledge of the manifestations of this form of exploitation and can be important stakeholders in combating it. The paper concludes by offering several recommendations for how policymakers can deepen …

Constitutional Anomalies Or As-Applied Challenges? A Defense Of Religious Exemptions, Mark L. Rienzi

Scholarly Articles

In the wake of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and now in anticipation of Craig v. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Inc., the notion that religious exemptions are dangerously out of step with norms of Constitutional jurisprudence has taken on a renewed popularity. Critics increasingly claim that religious exemptions, such as those available prior to Employment Division v. Smith and now available under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), are a threat to basic fairness, equality, and the rule of law. Under this view, exemptions create an anomalous private right to ignore laws that everyone else must obey, and such a scheme …

Do Discretionary Religious Exemptions Violate The Establishment Clause, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

The Establishment Clause is not violated when government enacts regulatory or tax legislation but provides, concerning these burdens, an exemption for those holding conflicting religious beliefs and practices. Such accommodations are at the discretion of a legislature and have as their purpose to ameliorate hardships borne by religious minorities and other dissenters who find themselves out of step with the prevailing social or legal culture. Statutory religious exemptions are commonplace in this nation where there is a long and venerable tradition of religious tolerance toward our neighbors, as well as those who have made their way to America to escape …

Religious Freedom In Canada: A Crucible For Constitutionalism, Benjamin Berger

Articles & Book Chapters

This article examines three axes around which contemporary Canadian debates on freedom of religion are turning: the status and protection of group and collective religious interests; the emergence – and instability – of state neutrality as the governing ideal in the management of religious difference; and the treatment of Indigenous religion. Each is discussed as a key thematic and doctrinal development emerging from recent activity in the freedom of religion jurisprudence in Canada. Each is also an instance, the article suggests, of religion doing its particularly effective work of exposing the fundamental tensions and dynamics in Canadian constitutionalism more generally.

The Many And The Few: Clash Of Values Or Reasonable Accommodation?, Marta Cartabia

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Playing Outside The Joints: Where The Religious Freedom Restoration Act Meets Title Vii, Amanda Brennan

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sanctuary, Temporary Protected Status, And Catholic Social Teaching, Kristina M. Campbell

Journal Articles

The concept of sanctuary has deep roots in many religious traditions, including the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, during the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s, many Roman Catholic congregations in the United States provided physical sanctuary to Central American refugees fleeing the brutal wars in their countries. In more recent times, Roman Catholic Churches have participated in the “New Sanctuary Movement,” providing not only physical sanctuary to undocumented immigrants and refugees facing detention and removal by federal immigration authorities, but engaging in advocacy and activism on some of the larger questions surrounding immigration policy in the 21st century. Since initiating his …

Removing State Constitution Badges Of Inferiority, Allan W. Vestal

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Our state constitutions contain archaic, ineffective, and unnecessary provisions that assign badges of inferiority to some citizens. Using Thomas Jefferson’s standard for when constitutional imperfections justify amendment, this Article identifies two groups of clauses. The first are provisions that were substantially exclusionary as enacted and relate to unconstitutional practices. Included are provisions relating to religious tests for public office, segregated schools, bars to marriage equality, and religious tests for witness competency. The second group are provisions that were symbolically exclusionary as enacted and are redolent of a prejudiced history. Examples involve the use of gendered language, clauses which make inappropriate …

Martyrdom And Religious Freedom, Christopher C. Lund

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Two Directions Toward Ethical Peoplehood, Jonathan R. Cohen

UF Law Faculty Publications

From the biblical era through the present day, the conception of Israel as a people devoted to ethical ends has been a core Jewish value. But how is such a model to be implemented? This essay suggests two basic ways of thinking about ethical peoplehood, namely, that one can begin with a people and try to transform it into an ethical people ("from tribe to ethics") or that one can begin with ethical norms and through those norms attempt to build a people ("from ethics to tribe"). Part I of this essay begins by sketching these two modalities in Jewish …

Lawyers Serving Gods, Visible And Invisible, Jonathan R. Cohen

UF Law Faculty Publications

A critique of the American legal profession can be framed through the metaphor of idolatry, specifically the proclivity of lawyers to serve visible rather than invisible interests in their work. This proclivity has ramifications ranging from broad matters like lawyers' responses to deeply embedded social injustices to specific matters such as the excessive focus on pecuniary interests in ordinary legal representation and the high level of dissatisfaction that many lawyers experience in their careers. Using as a lens biblical teaching concerning idolatry, this article begins by describing "visible" as opposed to "invisible" interests in the context of legal practice. It …

Congressional Authorization Of The Campaign Against Isil, Tyler Salway

Indiana Law Journal

I. THE BIRTH OF ISIL

II. CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORIZATION

A. EXPRESS AUTHORIZATION

1. METHODS OF INCLUSION

2. ISIL’S INCLUSION UNDER THE 9/11 AUMF

B. IMPLICIT AUTHORIZATION

III. ISIL AND THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY

CONCLUSION

Christians And Pagans, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Martyrdom And Religious Freedom, Christopher C. Lund

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Religious Arguments, Religious Purposes, And The Gay And Lesbian Rights Cases, Steve Sanders

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Prophesy, Public Theology, And Questions Of Justice: Some Modest Reflections, Barry Sullivan

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Trinity Lutheran And The Future Of Educational Choice: Implications For State Blaine Amendments, Richard D. Komer

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Religious Freedom, Human Rights, And Peaceful Coexistence, Leslie C. Griffin

Scholarly Works

At the Second Vatican Council, Fr. John Courtney Murray, S.J., persuaded the Catholic Church to abandon its long, and absolute, opposition to the separation of church and state. He brought a new concept of religious freedom to the Catholic Church. In honor of Murray, this essay looks at several current ways “religious freedom” harms individual rights.

The article describes the ministerial exception, which gives religious organizations the right to dismiss many employment discrimination lawsuits brought against them. It studies women’s right to contraceptive access, which has long been opposed by the Catholic hierarchy, and where employers have earned a legal …

Law, Religion, And Health Care, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Liberal Constitutionalism And The Unsettling Of The Secular, Benjamin Berger

Articles & Book Chapters

This chapter argues that certain features of our constitutional theories and practices have been more dependent than we have heretofore acknowledged on an implicit faith in the character and success of secularism. An assumption about the “secular” nature of the social world has lent certain resources to liberal constitutional theory and made possible particular ideas about the nature of contemporary constitutionalism. Yet the conviction that our political and social lives can be satisfyingly described as secular has been seriously destabilized by experience and theory alike. A simple faith in secularism thus unsettled, certain gaps or shortcomings in prevailing accounts of …