Send on behalf of Prof. Christopher Lund:
We write to solicit your interest in a discussion group on religious exemptions and harm to others that will be part of the SEALS Annual Meeting next year (2017). Please contact Christopher Lund (lund@wayne.edu) if you are interested in being a discussant.
Religious Exemptions and Harm to Others
The Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment sometimes allows, sometimes requires, and sometimes forbids religious exemptions from neutral and generally applicable laws. In recent years, scholars have focused on the issue of whether religious exemptions improperly impose harms on third parties. They have asked whether there is (or should be) a principle prohibiting religious exemptions that burden third parties, whether that principle has constitutional roots, where that principle might be located within legal doctrine, and how that principle might be applied. This discussion group brings together scholars with different answers to those questions to explore the various issues and advance the academic debate.