417 research outputs found
Pecuniary Reparations Following National Crisis: A Convergence of Tort Theory, Microfinance, and Gender Equality
The Representational Dialectic (with iIlustrations from Obscenity, Forfeiture, and Accident Law)
Without Religion, W(h)ither Family Law?
Most fields of law in the United States appear to be heeding the
exhortation of a big-selling song, Imagine no religion, in that they
manifest a commitment to secular rather than religious authority.1
Within the Articles of the nation’s founding document, before any
amendments were ratified, framers of the new American design
provisioned that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a
Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”2
The first—and to some observers the foremost—amendment added
to the United States Constitution announced an official separation
between religion and government.3 In the 7,591 words that fill its
articles and amendments, the Constitution says nothing about a
deity.4 Important expressions of national priorities—including the
Declaration of Independence, the official motto of the United States,
pronouncements of ostensible fact printed on American currency,
and state constitutions (all of them)—do mention God by name,5 but
they all rank below the Constitution.
Following the Constitution in this respect and proceeding
consistent with a directive stated in Supreme Court decisional law
that “the government must pursue a course of complete neutrality
toward religion,”6 American legislatures and courts “imagine there’s
no heaven”7 when they make and interpret laws of general
application. They bolster and encourage individual decisions to
engage in religious observance, to be sure. Maybe more than is
desirable.8 But the rule that any obligation that the law imposes must
rest on a secular purpose remains in place.
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