Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Panel on Religious Symbols, Public Reason, the State, et alia

I was fortunate to participate in an excellent panel at William & Mary ICLARS Panelyesterday, as part of the wonderfully massive and variegated International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies conference in Virginia. The overall theme of the conference organized by the marvelously active Cole Durham and Brett Scharffs was “Religion, Democracy, and Equality.”

Our panel, moderated by Professor Mark Movsesian, was called, “Religious Symbols, Public Reason, and the State,” and my co-panelists were Professor Perry Dane (Rutgers) and Professor Javier-Martinez Torrón (Complutense, Spain).

Perry’s talk, entitled “Endorsement, Legal Reason, and the Misguided Quest for Reasonableness,” was a penetrating and highly persuasive critique of the endorsement test. Perry sharply criticized approaches to law (not only in this context) that highlight feelings and sensibilities, and that ask judges to take on what he (channeling Philip Rieff) called “therapeutic” inquiries by reference to “reasonable” beliefs. He talked about endorsement in part in the context of the upcoming legislative prayer decision that the Court will hear in the new term. As a separationist–and, as I was very interested to learn, as Justice Brennan’s law clerk during the term that Brennan dissented in Marsh v. Chambers–Perry was skeptical that he would approve of either the reasons for changes to endorsement that the current Supreme Court might make or the new direction that it might choose (he was specifically critical of the possibility that the Court will apply an originalist methodology).

I was second and presented my co-authored paper (with Kevin Walsh), “Judging Theory.” The paper does not address law and religion head on, but it does so at an angle. The core claim of the paper is the comparative thesis that a judge’s institutional and role-based self-understanding is more important in constitutional adjudication that the collection of ideas that commonly travel under the banner “constitutional theory.” Kevin and I examine the extra-judicial (articles and books) and judicial writing (opinions) of two prominent judges–Judge Richard Posner and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III in several controversial and hot-button contexts (Second Amendment, partial-birth abortion, and the Establishment Clause (there’s the law and religion!)) to make the claim stick.

Finally, Javier discussed religious symbols proper with a particular focus on Lautsi v. Italy. Javier argued that in the European context, where there is no mandated establishment provision that applies to all nations in the Convention on Human Rights, it is wrong to superimpose that mandate through other provisions (provisions guaranteeing equality, for example). Javier further argued–similarly to Perry–that legal claims cannot and should not consist in feelings of “difference” from the majority. As he put it, “What’s wrong with being different?”

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Conversations: Marc DeGirolami

This summer, Harvard University Press published The Tragedy of Religious Freedom, by our very own Marc DeGirolami (left), CLR’s Associate Director. In the book, Marc argues for a “tragic” understanding of religious freedom, one “that avoids the twin dangers of reliance on reductive and systematic justifications, on the one hand, and thoroughgoing skepticism about the possibility of theorizing, on the other.” This week, Marc answers some questions about his book. Among other things, he discusses the differences between “tragic” and “comic” legal theories; the value of history and tradition in judicial decision-making; and the inevitability of judicial discretion. He also explains why the Court got religious freedom wrong in Employment Division v. Smith and right in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. 

CLR Forum: Marc, explain what you mean by “comic” and “tragic” approaches to law generally. Why do you think religious freedom, in particular, should be addressed from a tragic perspective?

DeGirolami: The terms comic and tragic are ancient and have been used in classical, literary, and philosophical settings. I draw on some of these meanings in the book, but I use comic in the legal context to mean two things: (1) a preference for systematic ordering of the law by reducing legal values either to one or to a small set, in the belief that human society is progressively improved by that reduction; and (2) the marginalization of the loss of other values in the process of accomplishing (1). Tragic approaches to the law resist both of these points. A tragic approach to law says that the reasons we value a practice like religious freedom are plural and cannot be reduced. Each value struggles to avoid absorption and subordination by the others. The clash of values results both from the limits of human reasoning and from the conflict of human interests and aspirations. So in the face of conflict in law, a tragic approach affirms that the comic impulse to reduce legal values, and systematically to marginalize those that are subordinated, will exacerbate conflict and end up deforming, and perhaps eventually destroying, important social practices and institutions.

CLR Forum: You single out Employment Division v. Smith, Justice Scalia’s famous opinion in the peyote case, as an example of the misguided “comic” approach and argue that it should be gradually dismantled. What’s so wrong with Smith? And why not just overrule it? 

DeGirolami: Yes, I am critical of Smith and believe it to be an example of a comic approach. Smith reduced all possible values of free exercise under the Constitution to a single value: formal neutrality. A neutral rule that is applied generally no longer can violate the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution after Smith, no matter how severely the rule burdens the religious free exercise of an individual or a group and no matter how insubstantial the government’s interest in enforcing the rule on a religious claimant. The Smith decision attempted to accomplish both of the comic points I listed above. It wanted to bring system Read more

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Hill & Whistler, “The Right to Wear Religious Symbols”

ShowJacketNext month, Palgrave Macmillan will publish The Right to Wear Religious Symbols by Daniel J. Hill (University of Liverpool) and Daniel Whistler (University of Liverpool). The publisher’s description follows.

Few issues concerning religious freedom provoke so much controversy and debate as the extent to which religious symbols should be protected in the public sphere and the workplace. This book provides the first sustained philosophical analysis of the concepts at issue in this debate, as well as covering all the major recent cases brought under Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights, including the landmark judgment Eweida v UK. In particular, it gives a clear presentation of the current state of the case-law, grounding it, in a unique contribution to the debate, in an investigation of its philosophical underpinnings. Particular attention is paid to different functions of the symbol and their theoretical background, with new emphasis on the role of the symbol in bearing witness to faith. This book will open up new vistas for philosophers of religion and legal theorists alike.

Posted on by Claudia E. Haupt · 1 Comment

Worth A Thousand Words

In my last post, I discussed the question of attribution of messages. Today, I want to turn to the perception of messages, in particular, the visual perception of religious symbols. We all know the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Does it make sense, then, for courts to distinguish between the textual and the visual, and to consider the latter less troublesome than the former?

Let me start with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) Grand Chamber decision in the Italian classroom crucifix case, Lautsi v. Italy. The Italian government argued “[w]hatever the evocative power of an ‘image’ might be . . . it was a ‘passive symbol’, whose impact on individuals was not comparable with the impact of ‘active conduct’.” Referencing an earlier decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court, the applicants conversely argued “[a]s to the assertion that it was merely a ‘passive symbol’, this ignored the fact that like all symbols—and more than all others—it gave material form to a cognitive, intuitive and emotional reality which went beyond the immediately perceptible.”

The Grand Chamber explicitly addressed the active/passive distinction, stating that “a crucifix on a wall is an essentially passive symbol and this point is of importance in the Court’s view, particularly having regard to the principle of neutrality. It cannot be deemed to have an influence on pupils comparable to that of didactic speech or participation in religious activities.” Several concurring opinions also addressed the designation of the crucifix as a “passive” symbol. The concurring opinion of Judge Power agrees with the majority’s assessment of the crucifix as a passive symbol “insofar as the symbol’s passivity is not in any way coercive,” but her assessment is more nuanced. She “concede[s] that, in principle, symbols (whether religious, cultural or otherwise) are carriers of meaning. They may be silent but they may, nevertheless, speak volumes without, however, doing so in a coercive or in an indoctrinating manner.” In her framing, the question is not whether symbols can communicate like textual language—she asserts they can—but whether the message communicated is one that violates the negative religious freedom of the observer under the Convention.

The ECtHR is not alone in asserting that visual religious symbols are “passive”: In Lynch v. Donnelly, Chief Justice Burger said the crèche was “passive”; in Allegheny County, Justice Kennedy used the “passive” label to describe the holiday displays; Chief Justice Rehnquist said the Ten Commandments monuments (featuring text) in Van Orden v. Perry were “passive”; in his dissent in McCreary County, Justice Scalia said the Ten Commandments display was “passive”; and the lower courts use the “passive” symbols language as well.

The “passive” label is used in two ways (alternatively or cumulatively). It can be an empirical claim about the way in which visual images communicate. Passivity used in this way suggests less ability to communicate effectively than textual speech. Or “passive” is a label for a bundle of factors—including brief exposure to the symbol, a vague notion of minimal offensiveness, or other characteristics of the symbol that result in its presumed noncoerciveness. But these notions, unlike the empirical claim, go to the context and cultural meaning of the symbol. The empirical claim is false; the neuroscience of visual perception just does not work that way. The context-and-cultural-meaning claim is complex and the “passive” designation is at best an ambiguous and misleading label. Either way, courts here and abroad should stop using the “passive” label to describe religious symbols.

Thanks, Mark and Marc, for having me over!

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

District Court Rules in Favor of Big Mountain Jesus

Image from the Flathead Beacon

An update on a story we’ve been following: Yesterday, a federal district court ruled that the US Forest Service did not violate the Establishment Clause by renewing a permit for “Big Mountain Jesus” (left), a six-foot-tall statue on land the Service leases to a private ski resort in Big Mountain, Montana. The statue has been in place since 1954, when the Knights of Columbus donated it–though this part is a matter of some dispute–as a war memorial. In response to an objection from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), the Service decided not to renew the statue’s permit in 2011. This decision led to public outcry–the service received 95,000 comments in less than two months–and the Service reversed itself, whereupon the FFRF sued.

Under current Supreme Court precedent, official display of a religious symbol violates the Establishment Clause if a reasonable observer would think that the government is endorsing a religious message. In yesterday’s opinion, the court ruled that a reasonable observer would not perceive an official endorsement of religion in the case of Big Mountain Jesus. The statue is on land the government leases to a private owner and is maintained by a private organization–facts an inscription on the statue’s base explains. Many observers would be unaware of any governmental involvement at all. Moreover, although a statue of Jesus is obviously a Christian symbol, the secular, even irreverent associations of this particular statue minimize any religious message. At least some people think of the statue as a war memorial. Some people value the statue’s historical significance. And most observers, the court suggested, see the statue as a kind of campy joke: “Typical observers of the statue are more interested in giving it a high five or adorning it in ski gear than sitting before it in prayer.”

It’s unfortunate that current doctrine favors the trivialization of a religious symbol as evidence of its constitutionality, but that’s where we are. (Remember the candy canes and reindeer around the creche?) The court also noted that Big Mountain Jesus had been around for about 60 years before anyone had thought to object. This, too, is an important factor under Supreme Court precedent: “longevity demonstrates that ‘few individuals, whatever their system of beliefs, are likely to have understood the monument as amounting, in any significantly detrimental way, to a government effort to favor a particular religious sect.'”

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which intervened in the case on behalf of the Knights of Columbus and other parties, has a press release about the case here. The FFRF says it will likely appeal.

Posted on by Claudia E. Haupt

Says Who?

Just in time for my post on symbols, the New York Times picks up the topic as well. So this is page A1 news! Of course, the underlying issue—the treatment of religious symbols in the public sphere—is hardly new. But it continues to be contested and rich and fascinating to study in comparative perspective.

Let me focus in this post on the question of attribution and the role of individual religious expression as opposed to expression of a religious viewpoint or identity by the state. The Times story opens with a Roman Catholic archbishop reminiscing about visiting Brussels and encountering there “the insistently secular bureaucracy of the European Union.” The story continues with the statement “’They let me in wearing my cross,’ the archbishop recalls.” Should he have been surprised? The story then continues with “the rude surprise” that ensued after the Commission objected to crosses on commemorative Euro coins. But should that be surprising?

None of this should be surprising to anyone accustomed to the U.S. concept of a free exercise and establishment distinction. Attribution is a central threshold question in the United States. We are very familiar with the attribution issue, because deciding whether the message is one attributable to the state or the individual determines whether the message is fully protected as a matter of free speech and free exercise or whether it is subject to Establishment Clause limits (which, by the way, does not automatically indicate a violation on the merits). When I talk about religious messages in the U.S. context, I must therefore distinguish between messages of the government and messages of individuals. (I’ve written about the intricacies of that question in the U.S. context in more detail here.)

This (from the U.S. perspective) familiar question of attribution is also gaining importance in the European context, and what makes it particularly interesting there is that we do not have this split into free exercise and nonestablishment in most systems. Take, for instance, the European Convention on Human Rights. The Convention itself contains no Establishment Clause-type provision. But in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) an interesting development is occurring. Article 9 contains the Convention’s religious freedom provision. In Article 9(2) we find the limitations clause (also a typical feature of continental constitutions). It states: “Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

As I’ve discussed here, recent case law seems to be slowly developing the meaning of the limitations clause beyond the limit on individual free exercise that it originally was by focusing on the type of democratic society envisioned by the Convention. An indicator of that development is the ECtHR’s emphasis on pluralism in the sense of allowing citizens of all faiths as well as nonreligious citizens to flourish in a democratic society. And that leads to a limit to religious identification imposed on the state itself, as opposed to limit on the individual’s free exercise. In short, the clause might become a limit on the state’s identification with religion. This is where we ask the attribution question. And in a system without a distinction between free exercise and nonestablishment, the interesting point to me is that we’re now starting to ask this question in the first place.

So if we ask about attribution—a question that has not traditionally been asked in the European context precisely because those systems tend not to have an establishment clause-like provision—we ask about the state’s actions, or religious expressions, as distinct from the individual’s actions or messages. And if we set the problem up this way, we are creating a dichotomy that many European national systems do not recognize. And so I find myself wondering whether national concepts of the public sphere may be on a collision course with what the European Court of Human Rights appears to be tending toward.

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Hughes, “Religion, Law, and the Present Water Crisis”

Hughes_DD_Hardcover:AUS dd.qxd.qxdThis past December, Peter Lang Publishing published Religion, Law, and the Present Water Crisis by Richard A. Hughes (Lycoming College). The publisher’s description follows.

Religion, Law, and the Present Water Crisis documents current and impending global water shortages and opposes policies of commodification and privatization of water ownership by multinational water corporations. On the basis of the religions of the world, Richard A. Hughes appeals to pure, running water as a symbol of the sacred. Furthermore, he argues that all bodies of freshwater are commons and that they should be protected by the public trust doctrine. In addition, he contends that there is a right to water and that this right is independent, free-standing, and the prerequisite of other human rights, applying to all states and occupied territories. The increasing acidification of the oceans makes it mandatory to protect them under the reserved water right doctrine and to designate them as national parks of the seas.

More generally, this book presents a synthesis of water studies and encompasses the religions of the world, theologies of baptism, American water law doctrines, public trust doctrine with special attention to Islamic water law, and international water law treaties. Clean water is a necessity of life. Therefore, it is compelling to recognize the urgency of water scarcity and the need to guarantee the purity of and accessibility to water for all people.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Movsesian at NY Catholic Lawyers Guild

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be the speaker at the New York Guild of Catholic Lawyers First Friday series. My talk, which will address the law of religious symbols in the United States and Europe, will begin at 8:15 am at the Church of Our Saviour, 59 Park Ave. (at 38th St.). For details, please contact Robert Crotty at Kelley Drye & Warren, LLP. CLR Forum readers in the neighborhood, stop by and say hello.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Kansas Municipality Changes City Seal After FFRF Complaint

The City Council of Buhler, Kansas, has decided not to fight the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which complained that Buhler’s City seal — which displays a very prominent Latin cross — violates the Establishment Clause.  You can see a story with the seal here; the seal was apparently created in 1988.  And here is an open letter from the Mayor of Buhler to its residents, indicating that the City did not have a taste for an expensive litigation with FFRF which it was very uncertain to win, and which might well deplete the City’s small budget.  Note some of the attachments to the letter as well, including a memorandum opinion from the ACLJ, suggesting that in light of Tenth Circuit case law, the City would be advised not to go to court.

Perhaps the problem was in the tension within Buhler’s own motto, “Traditional Values, Progressive Ideas.”  Sounds like a recipe for conflict.

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van Ooijen, “Religious Symbols in Public Functions: Unveiling State Neutrality”

This month, Intersentia Publishing will publish Religious Symbols in Public Functions: Unveiling State Neutrality: A Comparative Analysis of Dutch, English and French Justifications for Limiting the Freedom of Public Officials to Display Religious Symbols by Hana M.A.E. van Ooijen (LL.M, Utrecht University).  The publisher’s description follows.

Religious symbols are loaded with meaning, not only for those who display them. They have generated controversy in many circles, be they religious or secular, public or private, and within or outside academia. Debate has taken place throughout Europe and beyond, at times leading to limitations or bans of religious symbols. While this debate might seem whimsical in occasional flare-ups, it merits closer scrutiny, precisely because it is part of a long-running debate, it crosses boundaries and because it touches upon larger underlying questions.

This book singles out a particularly contentious issue: religious symbols in public functions and it focuses on the judiciary, the police and public education. It is often argued that public officials in these functions should be ‘neutral’ which consequently implies that they cannot display religious symbols. This book aims to unravel this line of thought to the core.

It disentangles the debate as it has been conducted in the Netherlands and studies the concept of state neutrality in depth. Furthermore, it appraises the arguments put forward against the background of three contexts: the European Convention on Human Rights, France and England. It critically questions whether state neutrality can necessitate and/or even justify limitations on the freedom of public officials to display religious symbols. Although this book is the result of an academic legal study, it can be read by students, academics, professionals, or anyone interested in the issue of religious symbols in public functions.