Like the Muses, the Justices of the Supreme Court are nine in number. Like the Muses, the justices can tell false things as well as true ones. In the messy area of government-religious speech, the Supreme Court’s opinions sometimes contain facts that seem plausible but are false.
Category Archive: Law and Religion
I pondered the question that their faculty at the law school had already answered—what role should the personal ethics and morality of a law professor play in teaching?
by Tess Anglin, 2L Note Candidate Michael DeBoer’s article Justice Brent E. Dickson, State Constitutional Interpretation, and the […]
by Robert A. Katz
Professor of Law (Faculty Profile)
Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
Lawrence W. Inlow Hall, Room 349
530 W. New York Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202-3225
[Editor’s Note: This article departs from the typical format and citation style of the Indiana Law Review Blog in the interest of providing commentary on the passage of Senate Bill 101, commonly referred to as the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” or RFRA. This article consists of abbreviated remarks presented by the author to the House Judiciary Committee of the Indiana General Assembly on March 16, 2015, 10 days before the bill was signed into law by Indiana Governor Mike Pence.]
Good day. My name is Robert Katz. I am a professor of law at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law where I teach First Amendment law and law and religion. My research focuses on the tension between religious freedom and anti-discrimination law. It is one of my most profound concerns as a citizen, a parent, and a member of the Jewish community.
The freedom of religion is one of our most fundamental rights as Americans. Yet, also precious to us as citizens are our civil rights and, most relevantly here, our right to be free from discrimination.
As I understand it, this bill has two main goals.