Volume 97

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    Reconsidering Hostile Takeover of Religious Organizations

    Beginning in 2016, the headlines of major publications began announcing that Donald Trump had successfully completed a “hostile takeover” of the Republican Party. What…

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    ‘The Peculiar Genius of Private-Law Systems’: Making Room for Religious Commerce

    Religious commerce has long sat uncomfortably at the nexus of public law and private law. On the one hand, such transactions invariably have garden-variety commercial objectives,…

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    What Is a “Substantial Burden” on Religion Under RFRA and the First Amendment?

    What is the meaning of a “substantial burden” on religion under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (and its state-level equivalents)? This question is timelier than…

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    Crossing Doctrines: Conflating Standing and the Merits Under the Establishment Clause

    In American Legion v. American Humanist Ass’n, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a thirty-two-foot tall Latin cross honoring soldiers killed during World War I…

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    Untangling Entanglement

    The Court has increasingly signaled its interest in taking a more historical approach to the Establishment Clause. And in its recent American Legion decision, the Supreme…

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    Reconsidering Thornton v. Caldor

    Thirty-five years ago, the United States Supreme Court decided Estate of Thornton v. Caldor. Caldor struck down, on Establishment Clause grounds, a Connecticut statute…

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    First Amendment Traditionalism

    Traditionalist constitutional interpretation takes political and cultural practices of long age and duration as constituting the presumptive meaning of the text. This Essay probes traditionalism’s conceptual…

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    Freedom of Association: Campus Religious Groups

    On August 15, 1789, the First Congress met to discuss the proposed Bill of Rights. On the agenda for the day was a draft…

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    Taking Stock of the Religion Clauses

    After a few decades of relative quiet, the Supreme Court has in recent years focused once again on the religion clauses and related statutes.…

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    Scholarship, Teaching, and Protest

    The preceding protest stems from Professor Michael McConnell’s use of an unredacted historical quote containing the N-word in one of his classes at Stanford…

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    Statement by Michael McConnell to Stanford Law School Community

    On Wednesday, in connection with the debates over ratification of the Constitution in Virginia, I quoted an ugly racial epithet used by Patrick Henry.…

  • ArticleVol. 97 · Iss. 6

    Statement by the Undersigned Editors of Volume 97

    On May 27, 2020—two days after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota—professor and former judge Michael McConnell, the author of…