Religion Law Commons^™

How The Meaning Of Incorporation Over Time Lends Support For Corporate Free Exercise Rights, Emily C. Cook

Georgia Law Review

Incorporated churches, mosques, synagogues, and the like enjoy the same protection as individuals under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. What about corporationsthat strive to follow religiousprinciples while earning profits? Do these corporations possess free exercise rights? This question has surfaced in response to a provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring employment- based group health plans to provide health insurance coverage for certain FDA-approved contraceptive methods. Numerous for-profit corporations that adhere to religious faiths that consider these contraceptive methods sinful have challenged the ACA provision as an undue burden on their free exercise because it forces them …

The Story Of Jewish Polygamy, Mark Goldfeder

Scholarly Works

This Article examines the intersection of law, religion, and culture in the evolution of polygamy in the Jewish tradition. It traces the development of Jewish thought on polygamy over time by assembling and analyzing relevant discussions, arguments, decisions, and biblical interpretations from the time of the Hebrew Bible passages, when plural marriage was an accepted part of Jewish society, to the early Middle Ages when the practice was formally and conclusively rejected. In doing so, the Article attempts to untangle the various influences-both practical and doctrinal, internal and external-on the evolution of marriage law in Jewish communities. These findings highlight …

Who Should Be A Jew? Conversion In The Diaspora And In The Modern Nation-State, Mark Goldfeder, Michael J. Broyde

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Conference On Religious Legal Theory: Rlt Iv: Expanding The Conversation, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

In this article, the author introduces the articles published in the Symposium Issue of the Touro Law Review, which is a compilation of selected excerpts from the fourth annual Conference on Religious Legal Theory (“RLT”) held April 10-12, 2013. By introducing each article, the author shows a sampling of the variety of topics and disciplines explored and the range of perspectives represented at the Conference, which revolved around the theme RLT IV: Expanding the Conversation. The author provides the background of the panelists to give context to each article, and then briefly discusses the relevance and main ideas.

Timeline Of Fr. Walter E. Cassidy N.2, Hall & Monagle, Llc

Timelines

No abstract provided.

Protecting The Faithful From Their Faith: A Proposal For Snake-Handling In West Virginia, Robert W. Kerns Jr.

West Virginia Law Review

In the hills of Appalachia sing the hymns of the faithful, preaching a belief in the handling of snakes to prove loyalty to God. In West Virginia, persons may take up poisonous reptiles and pass them amidst crowds in the name of religion without legal restraints. While other states prohibit snake- handling in the name of safety, West Virginia law remains void on the issue. This Article introduces the practice of snake-handling and examines the risks posed by taking up poisonous animals whose bite may cause serious injury or death. This Article then suggests how the West Virginia law may …

Government Nonendorsement, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

What are the constitutional limits on government endorsement? Judges and scholars typically assume that when the government speaks on its own account, it faces few restrictions. In fact, they often say that the only real restriction on government speech is the Establishment Clause. On this view, officials cannot endorse, say, Christianity, but otherwise they enjoy wide latitude to promote democracy or denigrate smoking. Two doctrines and their accompanying literatures have fed this impression. First, the Court’s recent free speech cases have suggested that government speech is virtually unfettered. Second, experts on religious freedom have long assumed that there is no …

Government Nonedorsement, Nelson Tebbe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law, Religion, And Pluralism: The Thought And Experiences Of Nathan Isaacs (1886-1941), Samuel Flaks

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Some Thoughts On Sanford Levinson’S “Divided Loyalties: The Problem Of 'Dual Sovereignty' And Constitutional Faith”, David Novak

Touro Law Review

Analyzes the two divided loyalties that Levinson faces in "Divided Loyalties: The Problem of 'Dual Sovereignty' and Constitutional Faith."

Israel's Constitutional Tragedy, Menachem Lorberbaum

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dual Sovereignty In Traditional Judaism And Liberal Democracy, William Galston

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Navigating The Space Between Dueling Sovereigns, Miriam Galston

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Divided Loyalties: The Problem Of “Dual Sovereignty” And Constitutional Faith, Sanford Levinson

Touro Law Review

Sanford Levinson provides the inaugural lecture of the new Jewish Law Institute at Touro Law School. He focuses on some of the ways that he finds himself constantly thinking of what might be termed "meta-issues" that arise in his joint study of, and intellectual confrontation with, Jewish law and American constitutional law.

The Liberty Of The Church: Source, Scope And Scandal, Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Working Paper Series

This article was presented at a conference, and is part of a symposium, on "The Freedom of the Church in the Modern Era." The article argues that the liberty of the Church, libertas Ecclesiae, is not a mere metaphor, pace the views of some other contributions to the conference and symposium and of the mentality mostly prevailing over the last five hundred years. The argument is that the Church and her directly God-given rights are ontologically irreducible in a way that the rights of, say, the state of California or even of the United States are not. Based on a …

Corporations, Taxes, And Religion: The Hobby Lobby And Conestoga Contraceptive Cases, Steven J. Willis

UF Law Faculty Publications

Beginning in 2013, the federal government mandated that general business corporations include contraceptive and early abortion coverage in large employee health plans. Internal Revenue Code Section 4980D imposes a substantial excise tax on health plans violating the mandate. Indeed, for one company – Hobby Lobby – the expected annual tax is nearly one-half billion dollars. Dozens of “for profit” businesses have challenged the mandate on free exercise grounds, asserting claims under the First Amendment as well as under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

So far, courts have been reluctant to hold corporations have religious rights of their own; as a …

Religious Freedom Legislation In The 2013 Virginia General Assembly, Ellis M. West

Political Science Faculty Publications

If there is any Virginia law that deserves to be called "iconic," it is Section 16 of the Virginia Bill of Rights, which combines the religious freedom provision in Virginia's first Declaration of Rights (1776) with portions of Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Liberty (1785). These two documents also inspired the religion clauses of the First amendment and are world famous.

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This article consists of the following sections: Section one presents the content of the proposed amendment and explains the ways in which it is unclear, redundant, and otherwise poorly written. Section two addresses the issue of whether the …

Clark Memorandum: Fall 2013, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• Looking Beyond the Stacks (David L. Armond and Shawn G. Nevers)
• A Lesson in Flying (RonNell Anderson Jones)
• Faith, Family, and Religious Freedom (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland)
• Instruments in His Hand (Elder Larry Echo Hawk)

Resisting The Grand Coalition In Favor Of The Status Quo By Giving Full Scope To The Libertas Ecclesiae, Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Working Paper Series

This paper argues that questions about "religious freedom" must be subordinated to the fundamental principle of the liberty of the Church, libertas Ecclesiae. The First Amendment's agnosticism with respect to the liberty of the Church is not ultimately normative. Catholics and others who merely seek religious "accommodation," as with the HHS mandate, for example, are agents of a status quo that illegitimately has comfortable self-preservation as its highest value. It is Catholic doctrine that "creation was for the sake of the Church," not for the sake of, say, religious freedom. The paper argues that the contingent constitution of …

Led Blindly: One Circuit's Struggle To Faithfully Apply The U.S. Supreme Court's Religious Symbols Constitutional Analysis, William M. Janssen

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.