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Inazu on Justice Ginsburg and Religious Liberty

John D. Inazu (Washington University School of Law) has posted Justice Ginsburg and Religious Liberty. The abstract follows.

Justice Ginsburg has left an important mark on many areas of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, but she has written relatively little in the area of religion. This relatively small footprint increased significantly in the opinion that she wrote in the Court’s 2010 decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. In particular, Martinez’s dismissal of the religious association claim at the center of the case dealt a severe blow to religious liberty advocates who have struggled to find alternate means of protecting religious expression in the twenty years since the Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith (which relegated to rational basis review free exercise challenges to generally applicable, neutral laws).

This essay examines three strands of Justice Ginsburg’s jurisprudence leading up to the opinion that she authored in Martinez: religion, government funding of expression, and equality. It first traces Justice Ginsburg’s religious liberty views through four facets of her legal career: her role as an advocate, her opinions on the D.C. Circuit, her Supreme Court nomination testimony, and her opinions and votes on the Supreme Court. It turns next to her views about government funding of expression, relying principally upon her dissent in DKT Memorial Fund v. AID. It then examines Justice Ginsburg’s longstanding commitment to principles of liberal equality. Finally, it considers the interplay of these three strands in Martinez, and offers three observations. First, because Martinez pitted religious liberty against liberal equality, it forced Justice Ginsburg to make a choice that prioritized one over the other and may have caused her to overlook some of the religious dimensions of the case. Second, Justice Ginsburg’s previous views about government funding of speech should have caused her greater concern over the implications of unconstitutional conditions in this case. Third, Martinez ultimately failed to address the values clash directly, relying instead on doctrinal intricacies that detracted from the core issues raised in this case.

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Cimino on Campus Citizenship and Associational Freedom

Chapin Cimino (Drexel University – Earle Mack School of Law) has posted Campus Citizenship and Associational Freedom: An Aristotelian Take on the Nondiscrimination Puzzle. The abstract follows.

Student expressive association on campus is a thorny thicket. Student affinity groups often choose to organize around a shared principle or characteristic of the groups’ members, which, by definition, makes those students different in some way from their peers. In order to preserve the group’s sense of uniqueness, these groups often then wish to control their own membership and voting policies. They feel, in essence, entitled to discriminate — a right arguably embodied by the First Amendment freedom of expressive association. When campus groups actually exercise this right, however, they run into university anti-discrimination policies, which can cost them official campus recognition. Thus, in the name of one important value, schools trample on another: campus citizenship. Both nondiscrimination and campus citizenship are values of equality.

At this moment, whose notion of equality is to prevail? Is it the university’s, taking the form of a blanket nondiscrimination policy? Or is it the student group’s, taking the form of the desire to maintain both associational freedom and campus citizenship?

Current First Amendment doctrine is ill-equipped to resolve the tension between these competing values, or “ends.” It is ill-equipped because any traditional First Amendment test is written to consider only one “end” — the end of the regulator. This was true prior to the Supreme Court’s June 2010 decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. Read more

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Alderman on The Designation of West Bank Mosques as Israeli National Heritage Sites

Kimberly L. Alderman (University of Wisconsin Law School) has posted The Designation of West Bank Mosques as Israeli National Heritage Sites: Using the 1954 Hague Convention to Protect Against in Situ Cultural Appropriation. The abstract follows. – ARH

This Article considers whether the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (“1954 Hague Convention”) should extend to protect against in situ appropriation of culturally significant sites. This Article examines the text and spirit of the 1954 Hague Convention, and inquires whether the 1954 Hague Convention imposes an obligation on its Signing Parties to protect not just the physical integrity of culturally significant sites, but also the relationship of local peoples with those sites. This Article uses the recent dispute over the Ibrahimi and Bilal Bin Rabah Mosques (also called the Cave of Machpelah and Rachel’s Tomb, respectively) on the Palestinian West Bank as a lens through which to make this inquiry.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Sidhu on Religious Liberty and Prison Grooming Requirements

A very interesting paper by Dawinder S. Sidhu (New Mexico), Religious Freedom and Inmate Grooming Standards, about the appropriate standard for claims for exemption under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and the First Amendment.  The abstract follows.

This Article explores the Eleventh Circuit’s repeated rejection of challenges, under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”), to “restrictive” inmate grooming policies (that require inmates to shave or cut their hair) in suits brought by plaintiffs who subscribe to a religion that mandates the growing of facial hair or long hair. It suggests, based on an analysis of case law, states’ policies, and recent legal developments, that the Eleventh Circuit’s approach in upholding these policies is no longer sustainable.

Today, thirty-nine states, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and D.C., do not have restrictive grooming policies or expressly grant religious exemptions to such policies, leaving only eleven states — including the three states within the Eleventh Circuit — that enforce restrictive grooming policies without the availability of a religious exemption. Also of note is the fact that the Department of Justice has intervened recently in two RLUIPA cases on behalf of inmates, arguing that the restrictive grooming policies of California and Alabama must be invalidated unless the state can present evidence that the “specific plaintiffs” in the suit have given rise to a penological concern that justifies the policies. California settled its case and agreed to eliminate its restrictive grooming policy. Against this backdrop, the Eleventh Circuit’s routine defense of restrictive grooming policies seems out of step and at least worthy of scrutiny.

Accordingly, I propose the following:

Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Dagan and Fisher on Commodification

It doesn’t address religion as such, but a new piece on SSRN, The State and the Market–A Parable: On the State’s Commodifying Effects, raises issues that law and religion scholars may find interesting. Over the last generation, more and more aspects of life have become matters of the market. People can make contracts about lots of things that once were off limits. Some scholars argue that this trend has gone too far, that certain subjects, like family relationships, relate so closely to human personality that their commodifcation does violence to something essential. The authors of this new piece, Tsilly Dagan (Bar-Ilan) and Talia Fisher (Tel Aviv) are skeptical of the anti-commodification position, arguing that state regulation may have commodifying effects as well. Their paper is entirely secular, but religious jurisprudence traditionally opposes commodification as well, and scholars who work in that field may find the discussion of commodification suggestive. The abstract follows.

Commodification has become the central parameter in delineating the contours of the market and in the division of labor between the market and the state. The commodification critique has become a ‘buzz word’ against the market and thus in support of State intervention. In what has been termed “taboo trades” – human organs, reproductive capacities, sexuality and the like – market-based orders have been condemned on the basis of commodification, thus leaving the floor open for state-intervention by regulation. The central argument of this article is that the commodificatory effects, often associated with monetary transactions, are not exclusive to monetized exchanges nor to the market arena. Rather, State intervention, as such, involves similar reductive effects, in light of its inherent itemizing, categorizing and ranking nature. This understanding has a significant implication for the structuring of the market-state debate: In light of the fact that upon closer scrutiny state ordering shares similar commodificatory effects with the market – we argue that it is not enough to raise the commodification banner in order to justify state intervention. Put differently, an implicit premise in the prevailing commodification discourse is that where the market commodifies, the state is necessarily neutral. However, state intervention – we will show – suffers from similar flaws. Another purpose of viewing commodification through the prism of State intervention is to expose the multi-faceted nature of the anti-commodificatory sentiment. Expanding the horizons of the commodification discourse beyond the traditional contexts of taboo markets to the unexplored terrain of state regulation exposes the fact that money is but one instance of a whole family of cases where thick social interactions are translated into a uni-dimensional currency that has a reductive effect on them.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Jamar on Freedom of Religion

Steven D. Jamar (Howard) has posted Challenges Presented to Law and Public Norms by Claims of Freedom of Religion Arising in Increasingly Diverse Societies on SSRN. The abstract follows.

Because religion is a potent force for many people, it affects the content, structure, and function of law and the law’s relationship to ordering society. The complexity and variability from state to state of the relationships of religion to social, governmental, and legal systems is remarkable. This variability and complexity stems from several major influences including in particular: (1) the diversity of religions and of people’s understanding of and use of those religions; and (2) the mix of religions within a particular state. As predominantly secular countries become more ethnically and religiously diverse, particularly through immigration from regions religiously different from the host country (e.g., the Muslim emigration into Christian Europe), more free exercise and accommodationist demands are being made by those whose religions are not merely a variant of the dominant religion. These demands bring new challenges and require sensitive balancing of conflicting fundamental rights and liberties. This essay examines three books addressing these topics from various perspectives and uses them as a vehicle for some commentary on the nature of the problems encountered.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Oman on Islamic Marriage Contracts and the Common Law

Nate Oman has posted a thoughtful piece, How to Judge Shari’a Contracts: A Guide to Islamic Marriage Agreements in American Courts.  The abstract follows.

This Article thus has two goals. The first is to show how the Muslim conception of marriage diverges from the Christian-influenced norms that dominate American law and society. Understanding this divergence provides a necessary background to Islamic mahr contracts. The second goal is to provide lawyers and judges with a doctrinal framework within our current law for analyzing these contracts and reaching sensible results in concrete cases.

The remainder of this Article will proceed as follows: Part II provides an introduction to Islamic law in general, and the law of marriage and divorce in particular, as well as some discussion of how these rules function in practice. Part III summarizes the way in which American courts have dealt with mahr contracts, showing how both husbands and wives seek to deploy arguments based on contract law, the law of premarital agreements, and constitutional law. Part IV provides a framework for analyzing mahr contracts. It argues that such contracts are best dealt with using traditional contract doctrines. Indeed, once the meaning of mahr contracts are properly understood, this Article argues that the common law of contracts is capable of dealing with potential problems presented by mahr contracts without any dramatic legal innovations.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Westreich on Annulment in Jewish Marriage Law

Avishalom Westreich (Ramat Gan) has posted The “Gatekeepers” of Jewish Marriage Law: Marriage Annulment as a Test Case, on SSRN. The abstract follows.

From early classic commentators to modern Jewish Law scholars, the character of marriage annulment in Jewish Law has been much debated. These debates revolve around the appropriate reading of Talmudic sources. Nevertheless, textual analysis of the main passages reveals support for almost all the competing opinions.

Normally, as the paper argues, Jewish Law is characterized by a pluralist discourse and, despite acrimonious controversies, the merits of competitive arguments are recognized, receiving some legitimacy – at least on a post factum level. Nevertheless, Jewish family law, and especially the case of marriage annulment, is characterized quite differently. In the last few decades some proposals of marriage annulment were raised as a solution to the problem of chained wives (agunot). On the basis of the Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Wendel on Christian Legal Ethics

W. Bradley Wendel (Cornell) has posted Lawyering in the Christian Colony: Some Hauerwasian Themes, Reflections, and Questions on SSRN. The abstract follows.

This paper was prepared for a conference on Stanley Hauerwas and the Law, held at Duke University in September 2011. One who shared Hauerwas’s theological commitments might find it difficult to serve as a lawyer, given that the principles of legal ethics are grounded in the kind of political liberalism that Hauerwas finds repellent. For example, Stephen Pepper’s well known liberal defense of the standard conception of legal ethics pretty much pushes all of the buttons that set off Hauerwas. Pepper argues that while the law necessarily imposes restrictions on what we may do, but no one else is empowered to place restrictions on our autonomy. In a complex, highly legalistic society, however, citizens are necessarily required in some cases to seek advice from legally trained professionals to determine whether their proposed course of conduct may violate the law, or to employ mechanisms provided for by the legal system (such as contrasts, wills and trusts, and business entities) to achieve their goals. In providing this assistance, lawyers should not impose their own views about the morality of their clients’ conduct; rather, they should assist their clients in implementing their own plans, providing technical assistance but not moral suasion. As any reader of Hauerwas knows, this is an aspect of the modernist anomie he warns about, in which the autonomy to decide for oneself is exalted into the first principle of ethics, with the result that individuals are cut off from the resources they need (traditions, communities, stories) to construct meaningful lives for themselves. This kind of alienation can be cured only by associating oneself with a community — for Hauerwas this is the church — and sharing in the ongoing development of its history. Thus, one may ask whether a Christian lawyer can follow some version of the standard conception, at least on Hauerwas’s conception of Christian social ethics.

With considerable hesitation, given the size and complexity of the corpus of Hauerwas’s scholarship, this paper attempts to offer an engaged Christian legal ethics in which the primary obligation of lawyers, acting in their Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Hatzis on Religious Discrimination

Nicholas Hatzis (Oxford) has posted Personal Religious Beliefs in the Workplace: How Not to Define Indirect Discrimination, on SSRN. The abstract follows.

Religious discrimination occurs when a person is treated less favourably because of her religion. In cases of indirect discrimination the claimant needs to demonstrate that an otherwise neutral measure has caused her to suffer a particular disadvantage which people with different religious beliefs did not suffer. In Eweida v. British Airways the Court of Appeal held that personal religious beliefs which are not part of official religious dogma cannot be relied upon as a basis for a claim of indirect discrimination. The article argues that this is an erroneous interpretation of anti-discrimination law. It discusses, first, the reasoning in Eweida; then, it examines the treatment of personal religious beliefs in other cases in Britain and the United States; finally, it places the issue in a human rights framework.