Kosher wine and antidiscrimination law

[stuartbuck]

It seems to me that this comment, like several others, misses the crucial
question, which is _not_  whether a given employee can fulfill the religious
mission of a business enterprise.  Rather, the crucial question is _who_
gets to decide?  The owner and manager of that enterprise, who has the
profit motive urging him to make rational decisions?  Or law professors and
judges who opine (without facing any risk of being put out of business if
they're wrong) that they personally don't see any reason why someone of a
different religion or no religion at all wouldn't be just as good.
Reasonable people can disagree as to whether the clerk in an Islamic
bookstore might do a better job if he is Islamic himself, right?  Why
shouldn't bookstore owners presumptively have the free exercise right to
select employees according to any religious criteria they think appropriate?

Stuart Buck


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Graber" <mgraber at GVPT.UMD.EDU>
To: <RELIGIONLAW at listserv.ucla.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2000 7:58 PM
Subject: Re: Kosher wine and antidiscrimination law


> This seems wrong.  I would, for example, trust Professor Duncan more than
a first year pro-choice law student to recommend to an influential defense
of Roe v. Wade (similarly, when asked to recommend a pro-life, as opposed to
anti-ROE, attack on abortion from a legal standpoint, I recommend John
Noonan).  A person with expertise on Islam might well know more about what
works appeal to believers than a believer (who might well have idiocyncratic
tastes).
>
> Mark A. Graber
> mgraber at gvpt.umd.edu
>
> >>> conlawprof at YAHOO.COM 12/18/00 18:54 PM >>>
> Paul Finkelman mistakes a religious bookstore for an
> academic bookstore. The fact that a non-believer has a
> BA in Islamic studies does not qualify him or her one
> bit to recommend which books are most likely to
> enhance the spiritual life of an Islamic believer.
>
> I would never ask an atheist to recommend a a Bible or
> a book on Christian prayer, and it would make no
> difference to me that the atheist had a PhD in
> theology. To understand the *spiritual value* of a
> book, one must be a believer.
>
> I would not be offended one bit if I were denied
> employment by an Islamic bookstore because I am a
> Christian. It is perfectly reasonable to take my lack
> of belief into account, just as it would be reasonable
> for a Civil Rights bookstore to refuse to hire David
> Duke as a clerk because of his KKK philosophy. Who
> would trust David Duke's recommendations for books on
> civil rights (regardless of how much he knows about
> the literature)?
>
> --Rick Duncan