Legal Responses to Religious Practices in the United States

Accomodation and its Limits

Austin Sarat

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781107023680
• eBook ISBN:
  9781139575218
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Law

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?

Table of contents

• Cover
• LEGAL RESPONSES TO RELIGIOUS PRACTICES IN THE UNITED STATES
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Sacred and Profane in American Law
• 1 A History of Ambivalence: How Religion and U.S. Law Have Developed Together
• Religion's Accommodation to American Law and Culture
• 2 How Should Liberal Democracies Respond to Faith-Based Groups That Advocate Discrimination? State Funding and Nonprofit Status
• Freedom of Speech, Equal Citizenship, and the Anticaste Principle: A Commentary on Regulating Hate Speech
• 3 Expanding the Bob Jones Compromise
• Religious Practice and Sex Discrimination: An Uneasy Case for Tolerance
• 4 Religious Freedom and the Nondiscrimination Norm
• Law, Religion, and Kissing Your Sister
• 5 Freedom of Religion or Freedom of the Church?
• Government for the Time Being
• Index