Religion Law Commons^™

Secured Credit In Religious Institutions' Reorganizations, Pamela Foohey

Scholarly Works

Scholars increasingly assume that most businesses enter Chapter 11 with a high percentage of secured debt, which leads to a high percentage of cases ending in the sale of the debtor’s assets under section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code rather than with confirmation of a reorganization plan. However, evidence and discussions about “the end of bankruptcy” center on secured creditors’ role in the reorganizations of very large corporations. The few analyses of cross-sections of Chapter 11 proceedings suggest that secured creditor control is not nearly as omnipresent as asserted and that 363 sales are not as dominant as assumed.

This …

The Prodigal Illegal: Christian Love And Immigration Reform, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the impasse around immigration reform, most everyone believes the United States’ immigration system is broken. And most agree that the key issue is what to do with the eleven million or so undocumented persons currently residing in the United States. As a Christian immigration law teacher, I have been interested in the debate among the churches as to what such reform should look like. In this Article, I use Professor Jeffrie Murphy’s conception of agapic love as a lens through which to examine reform proposals. I then evaluate the two positions Christian churches have seemed to embrace—permanent legal status …

Religion And Marriage Equality Statutes, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

To date, every state statute that has extended marriage equality to gay and lesbian couples has included accommodations for actors who oppose such marriages on religious grounds. Debate over those accommodations has occurred mostly between, on the one hand, people who urge broader religion protections and, on the other hand, those who support the types of accommodations that typically have appeared in existing statutes. This article argues that the debate should be widened to include arguments that the existing accommodations are normatively and constitutionally problematic. Even states that presumptively are most friendly to LGBT citizens, as measured by their demonstrated …

Sans Foi, Ni Loi. Appearances Of Conjugality And Lawless Love, Régine Tremblay

All Faculty Publications

This chapter deals with paradigm shifts in the legal regulation of adult intimate relationships. It includes the shifts from a unique conjugality to the multiplication of conjugalities, from marriage until death do us part to multiple subsequent unions, and from mimicking marriage by necessity to mimicking marriage by choice. Such changes open the floor for questions about the relevance of regulating adult intimate relationships today, or at the very least, about the compulsion to conceive of this kind of relationship as the cornerstone of Canadian family law. As such, it questions shifts in latent elements of the regulation of conjugality …

The Problems Inherent In Litigating Employer Free Exercise Rights, Henry L. Chambers Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

This brief Article proceeds in four parts. Part I discusses the Supreme Court's recent cases that address employer free exercise rights. Part II notes problems that accompany providing free exercise rights to employers. Part III explores the expansion of employer prerogative in the context of providing employers additional free exercise rights. Part IV considers problems that arise when employee rights are not deemed central to litigation regarding employer free exercise rights. The Article concludes by proposing a refraining of the free exercise issue that will consider how to account for the interests of the employer, its stakeholders, and its employees …

International Legal Experience And The Mormon Theology Of The State, 1945-2012, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"Least Restrictive Means”: Burwell V. Hobby Lobby, Noah Marks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lawrence V. Texas: The Decision And Its Implications For The Future, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Scholarly And Scientific Boycotts Of Israel: Abusing The Academic Enterprise, Kenneth Lasson

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

First Amendment Cases In The October 2004 Term, Joel M. Gora

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Quasi-Rights For Quasi-Religious Organizations: A New Framework Resolving The Religious-Secular Dichotomy After Burwell V. Hobby Lobby, Krista M. Pikus

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

This Comment aims to break free of the limiting religious-secular dichotomy by proposing a “quasi-religious” classification in order to achieve a more nuanced assignment of corporate religious exercise rights. Part I addresses the current legal standard for classifying organizations as religious and how the Hobby Lobby decision engaged that standard. Part II identifies and discusses the problems with the religious-secular dichotomy. Lastly, Part III proposes a new solution to the problem of corporate religious exercise rights that transcends the limitations of the religious-secular dichotomy and may also bring clarity to the Hobby Lobby decision.

Where's The Beef?, Stanley Fish

San Diego Law Review

A key concern of the papers written for this conference is the relationship between religious beliefs and secular beliefs of the kind that carry with them deep ethical obligations. Are these systems of belief essentially the same or are they different in important respects? The question is typically posed abstractly, and I thought it might be useful to have before us an example of religious belief and the demands that attend it. The example is taken from the beginning of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Christian, Bunyan’s protagonist, has suddenly become aware that his salvation is imperiled, and he is …

Religion And Insularity: Brian Leiter On Accommodating Religion, Christopher J. Eberle

San Diego Law Review

Crucial to Leiter’s overall case is the claim that there is no credible reason to accommodate religious objectors but not secular objectors: “[N]o one has been able to articulate a credible principled argument . . . that would explain why . . . we ought to accord special legal and moral treatment to religious practices.” He reaches this skeptical conclusion, in significant part, because he takes religion to be afflicted with a troubling defect, that is, religion involves commitment to categorical demands that are insulated from scientific and commonsensical scrutiny. But, I will argue, there is no good reason to …

Galston On Religion, Conscience, And The Case For Accommodation, Larry Alexander

San Diego Law Review

So these are some reasons why political theory might dictate that religious dissenters be accommodated even though, by enacting the laws to which the dissenters object, government indicates that it believes the dissenters err. If political theory justifies religious accommodations, however, then when government acts on the basis of political theory, is it establishing a religion? Bill argues, in support of Seeger, that claims of conscience derived from moral theory can qualify for accommodations under the Free Exercise Clause. But the two religion clauses in the Constitution use the noun “religion” only once. So if claims of conscience derived from …

Religion, Meaning, Truth, Life, Frederick Mark Gedicks

San Diego Law Review

I am a believer, yet I will also say that it is simply not correct that only religion can offer deep meaning to life, and I can say this out of my own experience. Ordinary activities can be crucial to the meaning of one’s life, whether or not they are experienced or defined as “religious.” Though not all such activities are as morally serious as religious belief and practice, some are, and they are surely not “nihilistic” or “nothing” because they lack the character of transcendent religious truth.

“Religion” As A Bundle Of Legal Proxies: Reply To Micah Schwartzman, Andrew Koppelman

San Diego Law Review

The debate among legal scholars about whether religion is special is chronically confused by the scholars’ failure to grasp a point familiar in the academic study of religion: “religion” is a label for something that has no ontological reality. Religion has no essence. If it has a determinate meaning, it is simply because there is a settled and familiar practice of applying the label of religion in predictable ways. The question of religious accommodation arises in cases where a law can allow some exceptions. Many laws, such as military conscription, taxes, environmental regulations, and antidiscrimination laws, will accomplish their ends …

Religion As A Legal Proxy, Micah Schwartzman

San Diego Law Review

In what follows, after briefly summarizing Koppelman’s position, I argue that his view is vulnerable to the charge that using religion as a legal proxy is unfair to those with comparable, but otherwise secular, ethical and moral convictions. Koppelman has, of course, anticipated this objection, but his responses are either ambivalent or insufficient to overcome it. The case for adopting religion as a proxy turns partly on arguments against other potential candidates. In particular, Koppelman rejects the freedom of conscience as a possible substitute. But even if he is right that its coverage is not fully extensive with the category …

How Much Autonomy Do You Want?, Maimon Schwarzschild

San Diego Law Review

At root, the questions of special accommodation and religious adjudicatory independence arise most urgently when a government grows in its reach and ambition. After all, if most areas of life, including those that touch on religious life, are left to people’s private arrangement, then not much special accommodation will be necessary. But when government takes control over more and more areas of life, regulating who shall do what and under what rules and conditions, then clashes with one or another religious way of life are almost inevitable. The dispute over government mandates to provide abortive drugs and contraception, in the …

Coming Up Short: The United States' Second-Best Strategies For Corralling Purely Speculative Derivatives, Timothy E. Lynch

Faculty Works

Purely speculative derivatives (PSDs) are derivatives in which neither counterparty is engaged in hedging. Unless used for entertainment purposes, PSDs are irrational, less-than-zero-sum transactions. Entities that engage in PSDs jeopardize their stakeholders and increase systemic risk. PSDs can also increase moral hazard, be used for regulatory arbitrage, and redirect resources away from efficient allocation of market capital. PSDs should be unenforceable, void for public policy reasons, except where expressly permitted to provide gambling entertainment, enhance price discovery, or increase liquidity for hedgers. In the U.S., however, PSDs are often legal and enforceable, even after the financial crisis of 2008 that …

Religion, Conscience, And The Case For Accommodation, William A. Galston

San Diego Law Review

I do not believe that religion is an obsolete constitutional category. But I do believe that the holdings in United States v. Seeger and Welsh v. United States, the Vietnam-era draft cases that extended conscientious objector status to individuals invoking nonreligious claims, were correct. Can I consistently embrace both propositions? I think I can. My argument, in brief, is that religion is indeed special. But when we understand what it is about religion that warrants both distinctive privileges and distinctive burdens, we will see that some other systems of belief track these features of religion closely enough to warrant comparable …