Landmark First Amendment Religion Litigation?

[Douglas Laycock]

  There are no post-Wolf cases in the Supreme Court.  They have
repeatedly denied cert, letting lower courts apply and abuse Wolf
however they want.  Some state courts have indeed imposed
congregational polities on hierarchical churches, at least with
respect to property ownership.  The Russian Orthodox case in
Massachusetts may be the most absurd of these.  But there is very
little of this judicial intrusion, even in the lower courts, in
minister cases, and virtually none outside the context of sexual
harassment.

  Quoting Lawyer2974 at aol.com:

> In a message dated 1/26/2007 5:26:13 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> mnewsom at law.howard.edu writes:
> That is all well and good, but I have the sense that the Court
> nonetheless applied secular norms in some post-Wolf cases, indeed
> perhaps going so far as to constitutionalize a Congregationalist
polity
> even in hierarchical churches (be they Episcopalian or Presbyterian
in
> their polity).  If this isn't the application of secular norms,
then
> what is it?
>
> As to the post-Wolf cases, it is difficult to argue that they can
be
> easily reconciled, there being a real difference on the precise
question
> of secular norms.  I think that the law is anything but clear,
> post-Wolf.
>
> One more point, the property dispute cases involving Eastern
Orthodox
> Churches certainly reflect secular norms -- a dislike of communism,
for
> openers.
> Even Justice Scalia expressly carved out the Ministerial Exception
in
> Employment Div. v. Smith (neutral laws of general applicability 
> analysis)...it is a
> little dfifficult to respond to your "sense" that the Court applied
secular
> norms without you referring to specific cases from which you derive

> that sense....
>
> Donald C. Clark, Jr.
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Douglas Laycock
Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
  734-647-9713
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