Religion Law Commons^™

Religious Freedom As A Technology Of Modern Secular Governance, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Salafism, Wahhabism, And The Definition Of Sunni Islam, Rob J. Williams

Honors Program: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

My capstone deals with the historical definition of Sunni Islam, and how it has changed in approximately the past 200 years. Around 1800, Sunni Islam was pretty clearly defined by an adherence to one of four maddhabs, or schools of law: the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali schools and are all based in nearly a millennium of legal scholarship. Since 1800, however, numerous reform movements have sprung up which disavow previous scholarship and interpret Islamic law their own way. However, certain reformist groups, such as Traditionalist Salafis and Wahhabis, claim that their version of Islam is the only “pure” …

Religious Exemptions, Third-Party Harms, And The False Analogy To Church Taxes, Christopher C. Lund

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

God And State Preambles, Peter J. Smith, Robert W. Tuttle

Marquette Law Review

Those who question the permissibility of official acknowledgements of God might be surprised to learn that the preambles of forty-five of the fifty state constitutions expressly invoke God. The practice is common in both liberal and conservative states and is equally prevalent in all regions of the country. Virtually all of those preambles give thanks to God, and many also seek God's blessing n the state's endeavors. Yet there has been no detailed assessment of the preambles' history or significance. This paper seeks to remedy that gap.

The preambles complicate the claim that official acknowledgements of God are incompatible with …

Lost & Found: Order In The Court -- The Party Game, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context.

The Lost & Found games project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy.

The second game in the series, Lost & Found: Order in the Court …

Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber, Kelly Murdoch-Kitt

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context.

The Lost & Found games project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy.

The first game in the series is a strategy game called Lost & …

The Equivalence Of Religion And Conscience, Lucien J. Dhooge

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

This Article examines issues posed by the equation of religious liberty with secular conscience, utilizing federal law and the law in those states which have adopted religious freedom restoration acts (RFRAs). The Article initially addresses the definition of religion through an examination of applicable literature and federal and state case law. The same approach is utilized to define conscience. The Article then examines similarities between the two concepts and the implications of their equivalence. The Article concludes that religion and conscience are moral equivalents that require equal legal treatment. However, equal treatment should proceed with caution in order to address …

Religious Freedom In A Multicultural Society, Faisal Bhabha

Commissioned Reports, Studies and Public Policy Documents

In examining the impact of recent judicial rulings on cases under Section 2a of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that enshrines freedom of conscience and religion, Faisal Bhabha draws our attention to how individuals’ religious expression has been and is being accommodated within Canadian jurisprudence. Bhabha argues that the Supreme Court of Canada is striving in its decisions to reflect the multicultural nature of Canadian society by striking a balance between competing interests. In so doing, Bhabha posits, the Court is shifting from a posture of strong rights articulation to a weak rights application. The paper also highlights …

Performative Privacy, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

Broadly speaking, privacy doctrine suggests that the right to privacy is non-existent once one enters the public realm. Although some scholars contend that privacy ought to exist in public, “public privacy” has been defended largely with reference to other, ancillary values privacy may serve. For instance, public privacy may be necessary to make the freedom of association meaningful in practice.

This Article identifies a new dimension of public privacy, supplementing extant justifications for the right, by arguing that many efforts to maintain privacy while in “public” are properly conceptualized as forms of performative, expressive resistance against an ever-pervasive surveillance society. …

Religion Is Special Enough, Christopher C. Lund

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Free Exercise Of Religious Identity, Lauren Sudeall Lucas

Faculty Publications By Year

In recent years, a particular strain of argument has arisen in response to decisions by courts or the government to extend certain rights to others. Grounded in religious freedom, these arguments suggest that individuals have a right to operate businesses or conduct their professional roles in a manner that conforms to their religious identity. For example, as courts and legislatures have extended the right to marry to same-sex couples, court clerks have refused to issue marriage certificates to such couples, claiming that to do so would violate their religious beliefs. Similarly, corporations have refused, for reasons grounded in religious identity, …

Render Unto Caesar: How Misunderstanding A Century Of Free Exercise Jurisprudence Forged And Then Fractured The Rfra Coalition, John S. Blattner

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis provides a comprehensive history of Supreme Court Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence from 1879 until the present day. It describes how a jurisdictional approach to free exercise dominated the Court’s rulings from its first Free Exercise Clause case in 1879 until Sherbert v. Verner in 1963, and how Sherbert introduced an accommodationist precedent which was ineffectively, incompletely, and inconsistently defined by the Court. This thesis shows how proponents of accommodationism furthered a false narrative overstating the scope and consistency of Sherbert’s precedent following the Court’s repudiation of accommodationism and return to full jurisdictionalism with Employment Division v. Smith …

Unmarried And Unprotected: How Religious Liberty Bills Harm Pregnant People, Families, And Communities Of Color, Public Rights/Private Conscience Project

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

Increasingly, the long-standing national commitment to equality is being undermined by competing claims to religious liberty. Advocates, politicians, and the media have all documented the “wave of religious-freedom bills” introduced in recent years, “almost all inspired by objections to homosexuality and same-sex marriage.” In the 2015-2016 legislative session, dozens of bills were introduced at the state and federal levels that would have created exemptions to otherwise generally applicable laws, including antidiscrimination protections, for persons whose sincerely held religious beliefs conflict with those laws. The most extreme version of these bills would allow religious objectors to engage in a wide range …

Should Conscience Be A Proxy For Religion In Some Cases?, Richard Haigh

Articles & Book Chapters

Two seemingly disparate case studies provide a fascinating lens through which to examine religion in the public sphere. One involves the government's mandate to immunize school children and the allowable exemptions therefrom; the other a professor's online course that requires some group sessions on weekends, and a student's claim for an exemption from that activity.

Constitutional Law: If These Walls Could Talk: Giving Undue Deference To Religious Actors By Expanding The Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine—Pfeil V. St. Matthews Evangelical Lutheran Church Of Unaltered Augsburg Confession, Jeremy D.F. Krahn

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

On Health, Law, And Religion, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

The Supreme Court recently decided a number of cases involving health, law, and religion, including Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, Zubik v. Burwell, and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. These cases were important for understanding constitutional undue burden limitations and the boundaries of religious exercise during the Obama Administration. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court's recent opinions addressing health, law, and religion have little value for many health law professors and most practicing health care attorneys. These individuals, tasked with teaching and applying the thousands of federal and state statutes, regulations, and government guidance documents that address a wide …

Religious Accomodation, Religious Tradition, And Political Polarization, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

A religious accommodation is an exemption from compliance with the law for some but not for others. One might therefore suppose that before granting an accommodation, courts would inquire about whether a legal interference with religious belief or practice is truly significant, if only to evaluate whether the risk of political polarization that attends accommodation is worth hazarding. But that is not the case: any assessment of the significance of a religious belief or practice within a claimant’s belief system is strictly forbidden.

Two arguments are pressed in support of this view: (1) courts have institutional reasons for acquiescing on …

The Costly Exercise Of Religion: Issues On Diocesan Bankruptcy Estate Formation And First Amendment Implications, Simon W. Bright

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Transactional Clinics As Change Agents In The Trump Era: Lessons From Two Contexts, Priya Baskaran, Michael Haber

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The results of the 2016 presidential election and the efforts by the Trump administration to make sweeping changes to a wide range of federal policies have left communities across the country feeling overwhelmed and threatened. In its first year, the Trump administration has been working steadily to slash budgets for health care, housing, infrastructure, schools, and other public benefits that help low-income and middle-class Americans, while adopting policies and engaging in rhetoric that has made many immigrants, Muslims, people of color, and LGBTQ people feel increasingly vulnerable and marginalized.

The authors of this commentary run law clinics that provide pro …

The Forest And The Trees: What Educational Purposes Can A Course On Christian Legal Thought Serve?, Randy Beck

Scholarly Works

In this short essay, I want to consider the educational purposes a course in Christian legal thought might serve. How could having such a course in the curriculum help accomplish the goals of legal education? One can understand why a law school with a Christian identity would want to offer this sort of course. Such law schools embrace a theology that helps adherents make sense of the world, including the world of human law. The less obvious question I want to consider is why a law school that does not subscribe to a particular theological understanding of the world (or …