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. ----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. 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