The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents Congress from making laws respecting an establishment of religion;prohibiting the free exercise of religion;or abridging the freedom of speech,the freedom of the press,the freedom of assembly,or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15,1791,as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. In the original draft of the Bill of Rights,what is now the First Amendment occupied third place. The first two articles were not ratified by the states,so the article on disestablishment and free speech ended up being first.
Frank Hoover Easterbrook is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as a United States circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since 1985. He was the Seventh Circuit's chief judge from 2006 to 2013.
City of Boerne v. Flores,521 U.S. 507 (1997),was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning the scope of Congress's power of enforcement under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case also had a significant impact on historic preservation.
In United States law,the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause,form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause together read:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
James Harvie Wilkinson III is an American jurist who serves as a United States circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. His name has been raised at several junctures in the past as a possible nominee to the United States Supreme Court.
Reva B. Siegel is the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Siegel's writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality,and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. She is currently writing on the role of social movement conflict in guiding constitutional change,addressing this question in recent articles on reproductive rights,originalism and the Second Amendment,the "de facto ERA," and the enforcement of Brown. Her publications include Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking;The Constitution in 2020;and Directions in Sexual Harassment Law. Professor Siegel received her B.A.,M.Phil,and J.D. from Yale University,clerked for Judge Spottswood William Robinson III on the D.C. Circuit,and began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,and is active in the American Society for Legal History,the Association of American Law Schools,the American Constitution Society,in the national organization and as faculty advisor of Yale's chapter. She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.
Diane Schwerm Sykes is an American jurist and lawyer who serves as the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She served as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1999 to 2004.
Thomas Eugene Baker is a constitutional law scholar,Professor of Law,and founding member of the Florida International University College of Law. With four decades of teaching experience,Baker has authored eighteen books,including two leading casebooks,has published more than 200 scholarly articles in leading law journals,and has received numerous teaching awards.
Ann Althouse is an American law professor and blogger.
Locke v. Davey,540 U.S. 712 (2004),is a United States Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of a Washington publicly funded scholarship program which excluded students pursuing a "degree in devotional theology". This case examined the "room ... between the two Religion Clauses",the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause.
Conscience clauses are legal clauses attached to laws in some parts of the United States and other countries which permit pharmacists,physicians,and/or other providers of health care not to provide certain medical services for reasons of religion or conscience. It can also involve parents withholding consenting for particular treatments for their children.
Diane Pamela Wood is an American attorney who serves as the director of the American Law Institute and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. She previously served as a circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
The Harvard Law &Policy Review is a law journal and the official journal of the American Constitution Society,a progressive legal organization. It was established in 2007. The journal publishes two printed editions per year,as well as additional content posted exclusively online. It is edited by Harvard Law School students and typically has a staff of approximately 75 students. The journal publishes articles presenting progressive ideas for law and policy written by legal scholars,policymakers,practitioners,and students.
Louis Michael Seidman is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington,D.C.. He is a constitutional law scholar and major proponent of the critical legal studies movement. Seidman's 2012 work is On Constitutional Disobedience,where Seidman challenges the viability of political policy arguments made in reference to constitutional obligation.
The ministerial exception, sometimes known as the ecclesiastical exception,is a legal doctrine in the United States barring the application of anti-discrimination and other laws governing the employment relationship between a religious institution and certain key employees with ministerial roles. As the Supreme Court explained in the landmark 2012 case Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C.,the exception is drawn from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and serves two purposes:to safeguard the freedom of religious groups "to select their own ministers" and to prevent "government involvement in [...] ecclesiastical decisions". The first purpose is rooted in the Free Exercise Clause;the second,in the Establishment Clause. When the ministerial exception applies,it gives religious institutions an affirmative defense against lawsuits for discrimination. For example,a woman seeking to become a Catholic priest cannot sue the Catholic Church for sex discrimination over its position that women cannot be ordained as priests. The Supreme Court later elaborated on when employees qualify as ministerial –and thus how broadly the exception applies –in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru (2020).
Washington v. Confederated Bands and Tribes of the Yakima Indian Nation,439 U.S. 463 (1979),was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the State of Washington's imposition of partial jurisdiction over certain actions on an Indian reservation,when not requested by the tribe,was valid under Public Law 280.
Cornelia Thayer Livingston Pillard,known professionally as Nina Pillard,is an American lawyer and jurist serving since 2013 as a U.S. circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Before becoming a judge,Pillard was a law professor at Georgetown University.
In United States constitutional law,the penumbra includes a group of rights derived,by implication,from other rights explicitly protected in the Bill of Rights. These rights have been identified through a process of "reasoning-by-interpolation",where specific principles are recognized from "general idea[s]" that are explicitly expressed in other constitutional provisions. Although researchers have traced the origin of the term to the nineteenth century,the term first gained significant popular attention in 1965,when Justice William O. Douglas's majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut identified a right to privacy in the penumbra of the constitution.
Jonathan Franklin Mitchell is an American lawyer,academic,and legal theorist who served as the Solicitor General of Texas from 2010 to 2015. He has argued seven cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. Mitchell has served on the faculties of Stanford Law School,the University of Texas School of Law,the George Mason University School of Law,and the University of Chicago Law School. In 2018,he opened a private solo legal practice in Austin,Texas.
National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra,585 U.S. 755 (2018),was a case before the Supreme Court of the United States addressing the constitutionality of California's FACT Act,which mandated that crisis pregnancy centers provide certain disclosures about state services. The law required that licensed centers post visible notices that other options for pregnancy,including abortion,are available from state-sponsored clinics. It also mandated that unlicensed centers post notice of their unlicensed status. The centers,typically run by Christian non-profit groups,challenged the act on the basis that it violated their free speech. After prior reviews in lower courts,the case was brought to the Supreme Court,asking "Whether the disclosures required by the California Reproductive FACT Act violate the protections set forth in the free speech clause of the First Amendment,applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment."
