Legal Responses to Religious Practices in the United States
Accomodation and its Limits

This book questions what practices constitute a 'religious activity' such that it cannot be supported or funded by government.

Austin Sarat (Edited by)

9781107023680, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 September 2012

217 pages
23.4 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.57 kg

There is an enormous scholarly literature on law's treatment of religion. Most scholars now recognize that although the US Supreme Court has not offered a consistent interpretation of what 'non-establishment' or religious freedom means, as a general matter it can be said that the First Amendment requires that government not give preference to one religion over another or, although this is more controversial, to religion over non-belief. But these rules raise questions that will be addressed in Legal Responses to Religious Practices in the United States: namely, what practices constitute a 'religious activity' such that it cannot be supported or funded by government? And what is a religion, anyway? How should law understand matters of faith and accommodate religious practices?

1. A history of ambivalence: how religion and US law have developed together Amanda Porterfield
2. Commentary on religion's accommodation to American law and culture Timothy Hoff
3. Against neutralism: faith based groups, discrimination, and state subsidy Corey Brettschneider
4. Commentary on freedom of speech, equal citizenship, and the anti-caste principle: a commentary on regulating hate speech Bryan Fair
5. Expanding the Bob Jones Compromise Caroline Mala Corbin
6. Commentary on religious practice and sex discrimination: a case for toleration? Meredith Render
7. Religious freedom and the nondiscrimination norm Richard W. Garnett
8. Commentary on religious freedom and the nondiscrimination norm Paul Horwitz
9. Freedom of religion or freedom of the church? Steven D. Smith
10. Commentary on government for the time being William Brewbaker.

Subject Areas: Social law [LNT], Law [L]