Has anyone been able to find the judge's ruling in this case?
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Volokh, Eugene
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 4:40 PM
To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: RE: Landmark First Amendment Religion Litigation?
"[W]hether or not there is room for "marginal civil court review " under
the narrow rubrics of "fraud" or "collusion" when church tribunals act
in bad faith for secular purposes, no "arbitrariness" exception in the
sense of an inquiry whether the decisions of the highest ecclesiastical
tribunal of a hierarchical church complied with church laws and
regulations is consistent with the constitutional mandate that civil
courts are bound to accept the decisions of the highest judicatories of
a religious organization of hierarchical polity on matters of
discipline, faith, internal organization, or ecclesiastical rule,
custom, or law. For civil courts to analyze whether the ecclesiastical
actions of a church judicatory are in that sense "arbitrary " must
inherently entail inquiry into the procedures that canon or
ecclesiastical law supposedly requires the church judicatory to follow,
or else in to the substantive criteria by which they are supposedly to
decide the ecclesiastical question. But this is exactly the inquiry that
the First Amendment prohibits; recognition of such an exception would
undermine the general rule that religious controversies are not the
proper subject of civil court inquiry, and that a civil court must
accept the ecclesiastical decisions of church tribunals as it finds
them. Watson itself requires our conclusion in its rejection of the
analogous argument that ecclesiastical decisions of the highest church
judicatories need only be accepted if the subject matter of the dispute
is within their "jurisdiction."" Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese v.
Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 713 (1976).
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 1:24 PM
To: religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
Subject: Re: Landmark First Amendment Religion Litigation?
In a message dated 1/26/2007 4:20:12 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I will be the first to admit that I may have misread
Jones v. Wolf, but "neutral principles of law" is a rather capacious
concept, and don't forget Gonzalez v. Roman Catholic Archbishop of
Manila and the insistence there of the right of the Court to provide a
remedy where there was "fraud, collusion, or arbitrariness" in the
proceedings before the religious tribunal.
Jones v. Wolf sets forth one means by which a state may
constitutionally chose to resolve property disputes..it does not stand
ofr a general proposition applicable to the ministerial exception or
other aspects of ecclesial life.....case law has specifically held that
the "arbitrariness" referred to in Gonzalez does not give a court the
jurisdiction to interpret an ecclesiaastical organization's
ecclesiastical process
Donald C. Clark, Jr.
2333 Waukegan Road
Suite 160
Bannockburn, Illinois 60015
847-236-0900
847-236-0909 (fax)
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