Academic

Helfand on Regulation of Religious Commercial Conduct

By Lawrence Solum

Michael A. Helfand (Pepperdine University School of Law) has posted Fighting for the Debtor's Soul: Regulating Religious Commercial Conduct (George Mason Law Review, Vol. 19, 2011) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

While courts often think of religion in terms of faith, prayer, and conscience, many religious groups are increasingly looking to religion as a source of law, commerce, and contract. As a result, courts are being called upon to apply the church autonomy doctrine ? which bars courts from reviewing matters of faith, doctrine, and church governance ? where commercial conduct is religiously motivated. In this Article, I consider an example of the challenges faced by courts when trying to interpret and regulated religious commerical conduct: the constitutionality of imposing sanctions for violating the Bankruptcy Code?s automatic stay by submitting a dispute for religious arbitration. In considering this example, I suggest that courts, instead of trying to take religion out of the equation, need to develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the religious dynamics of a case to know when they can ? and cannot ? review and regulate the conduct in question.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on March 16, 2011 (boomark / email).