5,463 research outputs found
Untangling Entanglement
The Court has increasingly signaled its interest in taking a more historical approach to the Establishment Clause. And in its recent American Legion decision, the Supreme Court strongly suggested that the three-prong Lemon test is essentially dead letter. Such a result would make sense for the first two prongs of the Lemon test about secular purpose and the effects. Many scholars have observed that these aspects of the prong are judicial creations far afield of the Establishment Clause history. But what of the entanglement prong of the test? If we rejected all applications of this prong of the analysis, would we be essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater? This Article cautions that this might be the case.
A close analysis of the Court’s entanglement jurisprudence, compared against historical support for the various applications, suggests that entanglement jurisprudence ought to remain good law in at least two contexts. First, where it has protected religious groups from government interference with the autonomy, internal affairs, and administration. Second, where it prevents government from treating certain religious groups in a preferential way, including by granting monopoly power in the performance of public functions. On the other hand, the Court’s entanglement precedent is on far shakier historical ground in several contexts, including anti-sectarian skepticism of any sort of government aid to religious groups (and accompanying monitoring requirements to avoid religious use of funds), concerns about political divisiveness when government interacts with religious groups, and opposition to government classifications necessary to provide religious exemptions. If the Court were to modify its entanglement analysis to disregard ahistorical applications and embrace the historical ones, the upshot would be far less apparent tension between the Religion Clauses. Such an interpretation could facilitate an increase in religious pluralism and human flourishing and a decrease in unnecessary cultural fights aimed at excluding religion from the public sphere
First Amendment “Harms”
What role should harm to third parties play in the government’s ability to protect religious rights? The intuitively appealing “harm” principle has animated new theories advanced by scholars who argue that religious exemptions are indefensible whenever they result in cognizable harm to third parties. This third-party harm theory is gaining traction in some circles, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s pending cases in Little Sisters of the Poor and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. While focusing on harm appears at first to provide an appealing, simple, and neutral principle for avoiding other difficult moral questions, the definition of harm itself operates on top of a deep moral theory about what counts as harm and why. Consequently, multiple scholars advancing iterations of these theories use “harm” as a term of art to mean very different things. This in turn results in scholars talking past each other and trading on a superficially simple idea that turns out to be incredibly complex. For this reason, the harm principle has proven unworkable in other contexts, including criminal and environmental law. This Article highlights the flaws of this approach in the religious context by measuring the theory against its own ends, including the theory’s failure to account for harms this approach would cause for religious minorities and other vulnerable groups.
Refuting the unhelpful fixation on the mere presence of generic harm, this Article makes two important contributions, one descriptive and one normative. First, this Article carefully describes the nuanced ways that courts classify and weigh different types of harm, and it identifies three categories: (1) prohibited harms (meaning harms that are categorically impermissible); (2) probative harms (meaning relevant harms that can be balanced against other harms); and (3) inadmissible harms (meaning harms that are given no weight regardless of how severely or disproportionately they are experienced by third parties). This Article demonstrates how these categories of harm are not limited to religious exemptions but are in fact common to all First Amendment rights. Further, this descriptive framework highlights the competing harms that always arise when First Amendment rights are protected. Second, this Article argues that moving beyond a false dichotomy of harm versus no harm allows one to ask much more fruitful normative questions, including whether there is a justifiable tradeoff between the specific harm and the social goods it provides, whether institutions can be modified to mitigate avoidable harm, and whether disproportionate harms can be distributed in more just ways. This Article offers examples of how these necessary normative questions are already woven into the legal framework that governs many sorts of religious exemptions
Untangling Entanglement
The Court has increasingly signaled its interest in taking a more historical approach to the Establishment Clause. And in its recent American Legion decision, the Supreme Court strongly suggested that the three-prong Lemon test is essentially dead letter. Such a result would make sense for the first two prongs of the Lemon test about secular purpose and the effects. Many scholars have observed that these aspects of the prong are judicial creations far afield of the Establishment Clause history. But what of the entanglement prong of the test? If we rejected all applications of this prong of the analysis, would we be essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater? This Article cautions that this might be the case. A close analysis of the Court\u27s entanglement jurisprudence, compared against historical support for the various applications, suggests that entanglement jurisprudence ought to remain good law in at least two contexts. First, where it has protected religious groups from government interference with the autonomy, internal affairs, and administration. Second, where it prevents government from treating certain religious groups in a preferential way, including by granting monopoly power in the performance of public functions. On the other hand, the Court\u27s entanglement precedent is on far shakier historical ground in several contexts, including anti-sectarian skepticism of any sort of government aid to religious groups (and accompanying monitoring requirements to avoid religious use of funds), concerns about political divisiveness when government interacts with religious groups, and opposition to government classifications necessary to provide religious exemptions. If the Court were to modify its entanglement analysis to disregard ahistorical applications and embrace the historical ones, the upshot would be far less apparent tension between the Religion Clauses. Such an interpretation could facilitate an increase in religious pluralism and human flourishing and a decrease in unnecessary cultural fights aimed at excluding religion.from the public sphere
The Incidence of Cancer
1. The crude mortality rates due to cancer in Scotland, Glasgow and the province of Saskatchewan are presented. 2. The practice of using crude mortality rates as an indication of the incidence of cancer is discussed and condemned. 3. A method of correcting the crude mortality rate for over- and under-diagnosis of cancer is presented. 4. The crude incidence of cancer in Saskatchewan has been calculated using all the sources of information available in that province. 5. The age distribution of cancer in Saskatchewan is presented
Revising the Intolerance of Uncertainty Model of Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Evidence from UK and Italian Undergraduate Samples
The Intolerance of Uncertainty Model (IUM) of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) attributes a key role to Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU), and additional roles to Positive Beliefs about Worry (PBW), Negative Problem Orientation (NPO), and Cognitive Avoidance (CA), in the development and maintenance of worry, the core feature of GAD. Despite the role of the IUM components in worry and GAD has been considerably demonstrated, to date no studies have explicitly assessed whether and how PBW, NPO, and CA might turn IU into worry and somatic anxiety. The current studies sought to re-examine the IUM by assessing the relationships between the model’s components on two different non-clinical samples made up of UK and Italian undergraduate students. One-hundred and seventy UK undergraduates and 488 Italian undergraduates completed measures assessing IU, worry, somatic anxiety, depression, and refined measures of PBW, NPO, and CA. In each sample, two mediation models were conducted in order to test whether PBW, NPO, and CA differentially mediate the path from IU to worry and the path from IU to somatic anxiety. Secondly, it was tested whether IU also moderates the mediations. Main findings showed that, in the UK sample, only NPO mediated the path from IU to worry; as far as concern the path to anxiety, none of the putative mediators was significant. Differently, in the Italian sample PBW and NPO were mediators in the path from IU to worry, whereas only CA played a mediational role in the path from IU to somatic anxiety. Lastly, IU was observed to moderate only the association between NPO and worry, and only in the Italian sample. Some important cross-cultural, conceptual, and methodological issues raised from main results are discussed
The influence of pre-experimental experience on social discrimination in rats (Rattus norvegicus)
The authors used laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus) of known relatedness and contrasting familiarity to assess the potential effect of preexperimental social experience on subsequent social recognition. The authors used the habituation-discrimination technique, which assumes that multiple exposures to a social stimulus (e.g., soiled bedding) ensure a subject discriminates between the habituation stimulus and a novel stimulus when both are introduced simultaneously. The authors observed a strong discrimination if the subjects had different amounts of preexperimental experience with the donors of the 2 stimuli but a weak discrimination if the subjects had either equal amounts of preexperimental experience or no experience with the stimuli. Preexperimental social experience does, therefore, appear to influence decision making in subsequent social discriminations. Implications for recognition and memory research are discussed
Elevated interferon-stimulated gene transcription in peripheral blood mononuclear cells occurs in patients infected with genotype 1 but not genotype 3 hepatitis C virus
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) can be classified into seven distinct genotypes that are associated with differing pathologies and respond differently to antiviral therapy. In the UK, genotype 1 and 3 are present in approximately equal proportions. Chronic infection with HCV genotype 3 is associated with increased liver steatosis and reduced peripheral total cholesterol levels, which potentially influences peripheral immune responses. To understand these differences, we investigated host gene transcription in peripheral blood mononuclear cells by microarray and quantitative PCR in patients with genotype 1 (n = 22) or genotype 3 infection (n = 22) and matched healthy controls (n = 15). Enrichment of genes involved in immune response and inflammatory pathways were present in patients infected with HCV genotype 1; however, no differences in genes involved in lipid or cholesterol metabolism were detected. This genotype-specific induction of genes is unrelated to IL28B genotype or previous treatment failure. Our data support the hypothesis that genotype 1 infection drives a skewed Type I interferon response and provides a foundation for future investigations into the host–pathogen interactions that underlie the genotype-specific clinical outcomes of chronic HCV infection
Constitutional Anomalies or As-Applied Challenges? A Defense of Religious Exemptions
In the wake of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and now in anticipation of Craig v. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Inc., the notion that religious exemptions are dangerously out of step with norms of Constitutional jurisprudence has taken on a renewed popularity. Critics increasingly claim that religious exemptions, such as those available prior to Employment Division v. Smith and now available under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), are a threat to basic fairness, equality, and the rule of law. Under this view, exemptions create an anomalous private right to ignore laws that everyone else must obey, and such a scheme will result in a tidal wave of religious claimants striking down government action. Our Article presents an observation that undermines these central criticisms. Far from being “anomalous” or “out of step” with our constitutional traditions, religious exemptions are just a form of “as-applied” challenges offered as a default remedy elsewhere in constitutional adjudication. Courts regularly provide exemptions from generally applicable laws for other First Amendment protected activity like expressive conduct that mirror the exemptions critics fear in the context of religious exercise. The Article also presents original empirical analysis, including a national survey of all federal RFRA cases since Hobby Lobby, indicating that concerns of critics about religious exemptions have not been borne out as an empirical matter. Our findings suggest that even after Hobby Lobby, cases dealing with religious exemption requests remain much less common than cases dealing with other expressive claims, and are less likely to result in invalidation of government actions. Thus, far from creating anomalous preferential treatment that threatens the rule of law, a religious exemption framework simply offers a similar level of protection courts have long provided for dissenting minority rights housed elsewhere in the First Amendment
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