What is religious freedom supposed to free? That is, what is the operant understanding of “religion” behind the claims of religious freedom such that religion requires its own forms, practices, and concepts of freedom under the law? Is there something about religion that gives freedom of religion either a privileged or a peculiarly worrisome character different in kind from artistic, political, or sexual freedom? And to this list, why not add occupational, associational, or, say, economic freedoms?
Posts Tagged ‘law and religion’
April 3rd, 2012
What is religious freedom supposed to free?
posted by Webb Keane
March 19th, 2012
Israel, secularism, and democracy
posted by John D. BoyAt Harvard Law School, faculty members Noah Feldman and Duncan Kennedy recently debated the question “Can Israel Be Both Jewish and Democratic?”
March 7th, 2012
The world that Smith made
posted by Winnifred Fallers SullivanThere is much that could be said about the history of the Catholic Church and its dedication to the defense of religious freedom. What interests me about the formation of a new Ad Hoc Committee on religious freedom at this time is the company that the bishops are keeping today—and why the bishops’ bellicose language accusing the Obama administration of mounting a war on religious liberty seems to make sense to such a disparate and varied group. Beyond the obvious self-interest, there is a genuine urgency to the bishops’ appeal, one that is legible to a surprising number of Americans.
March 6th, 2012
Hosanna-Tabor in the religious freedom Panopticon
posted by Peter DanchinMichel Foucault famously describes Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon as a “cruel, ingenious cage” to be understood not as a “dream building … [but as] the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form … a figure of political technology.” For Foucault, panopticism is “the general principle of a new ‘political anatomy’ whose object and end are not relations of sovereignty but the relations of discipline: [t]he celebrated, transparent circular cage, with its high towers powerful and knowing.” In reading the Supreme Court’s decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC recognizing a “ministerial exception” to antidiscrimination law—a case hailed almost immediately as a victory for religious freedom—it is for me the specter of the Panopticon that haunts every page.
February 23rd, 2012
Women’s Rights, Muslim Family Law, and the Politics of Consent
posted by Taline CoxLila Abu-Lughod and Anumpama Rao—editors of Women’s Rights, Muslim Family Law, and the Politics of Consent, a special issue of SocialDifference-Online—sat down for a conversation with the editors of Jadaliyya.
February 11th, 2012
NYC religious groups vacate public schools and march in protest
posted by Grace YukichThe past few months have been a wild ride for church-state issues in the U.S. The Hosanna-Tabor decision upheld the “ministerial exemption,” the Obama administration required Catholic hospitals to cover birth control for employees (and then, due to outcry, required insurance companies to cover the costs instead). And in New York City, February 12th marks [...]
February 6th, 2012
Is religion special?
posted by Wei ZhuIn Religion Dispatches, Katherine Stewart asks what the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C. decision can tell us about how religion is viewed by the courts and, more broadly, by the government.
February 2nd, 2012
Religion in public schools
posted by Wei ZhuIn Reuters, journalist Katherine Stewart gives her thoughts regarding American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) recently filed lawsuit against New Heights Middle School for proselytizing students, and the larger trends of “peer” and “pizza” evangelism.
January 31st, 2012
“The Church”
posted by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
The last sentence of the Court’s opinion in Hosanna-Tabor announces the dogma that binds the majority opinion. Affirming for the first time the constitutional status of the ministerial exception, the Chief Justice declares that “(t)he church must be free to choose those who will guide it on its way.” Not “persons” must be free to choose their own ministers, but “the church” must be free. What is “the church?”
January 19th, 2012
Religious freedom defeats secular law
posted by Leslie Griffin
Secular law lost unanimously in the Supreme Court of the United States last week. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal antidiscrimination statute that bars discrimination against employees on the basis of a disability. The ADA also contains an antiretaliation provision that prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who file charges under the statute. The statute itself does not exempt religious employers from liability. Nonetheless, the Court dismissed schoolteacher Cheryl Perich’s ADA retaliation lawsuit against Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School on the grounds that Perich was a minister.
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