Notre Dame Law School’s Program on Church, State & Society has announced the winners of its annual writing competition.
First place went to Michael Bradley, a member of the Law School’s Class of 2022, for his paper, “Religious Symbols, the Establishment Clause, and Reasons Neutrality.” Bradley will receive a $3,000 cash prize.
Bradley’s paper jumps off from the 2019 decision in American Legion v. American Humanist Association — the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent religious symbols case — to generally examine the court’s religious symbols jurisprudence. In his paper, Bradley argued that the American Legion court remained bound to the doctrine of Lemon v. Kurtzman, a test that reinforces the secularism that Everson v. Board of Education, the court’s first big Establishment Clause case, established in 1947. He also argued that the Establishment Clause, properly understood, allows constitutional actors to erect and maintain many, and many kinds of, religious monuments and displays for a broader set of reasons than American Legion permitted.
He became interested in the topic while taking Paul J. Schierl/Fort Howard Corp. Professor of Law Richard Garnett’s religious freedom seminar during his second year of law school. Garnett also directs the Program on Church, State & Society.
“As we worked our way through the syllabus, I came to think that the court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence, which is famously tangled and inconsistent, was fundamentally mistaken, and I...
Sydney: A Melbourne-based Islamic community centre head has denounced what he termed as ‘false accusations’ after authorities in the United Arab Emirates linked the centre to an Omani co-pilot accu...