On 5/10/2010 3:14 PM, Ira (Chip) Lupu wrote:
If social liberals join a conservative Christian group, and succeed in changing
the message, conservative Christians can leave and form a new, conservative
Christian group.
You do recognize, don't you, that the Christian Legal Society is a
national religious organization of attorneys and law students? I do
think that CLS has a right to maintain control over its membership and
its name. To suggest that it is appropriate to allow a student chapter
to be taken over by people who have different beliefs, and then require
the original group to form a new entity (which would also then have to
have a new name) seems at least as fantastical as anything else you
suggest. If someone wants a group for these new beliefs, that seems to
be more appropriate to require them to start the new group.
To Art Spitzer's question -- I don't know how you can say the purpose of an "all-comers"
policy is "fully served" by allowing dissenters to attend meetings, but not vote or hold
office. This is a matter of degree -- the more that dissenters can exercise political influence in
the group, the more the interchange within the group may be open, dynamic, and non-dogmatic.
Political influence? Firmly held religious beliefs are generally not
established by who gets the most votes. And why do you want to insist
that any student group be "non-dogmatic?" Is this another term for
"politically correct?"
Those may not be purposes that religious congregations may prefer, but the law
school can have its own, independent purposes for insisting on access to full
membership for all comers.
And what might these be? It seems that this policy will ultimately
backfire. What is to be gained by requiring a Latino student group to
change its documents to allow whites to become voting members? Why
should the gay, lesbian, transgender group have to allow individuals who
do not believe in their lifestyle to be members of their organization?
(Whether anyone at Hastings LS really thought all of this through is another question,
but CLS did stipulate that "all comers" is among the relevant policies.)
Ira C. Lupu
F. Elwood& Eleanor Davis Professor of Law
George Washington University Law School
2000 H St., NW
Washington, DC 20052
(202)994-7053
My SSRN papers are here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=181272#reg
---- Original message ----
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 14:45:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu (on behalf of Rick
Duncan<nebraskalawp...@yahoo.com>)
Subject: RE: Factual Clarification re CLS
To: Law& Religion issues for Law Academics<religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu>
Perhaps democrats will not attempt to take control
of the Young Republicans.
But I think there is a good chance that socially
liberal Christians may take control of a
conservative Christian group that can't protect its
doctrinal beliefs through its membership policy.
By the way, it is clear that the CLS allows all
comers to attend its meetings. This case is strictly
about who can control an organization's beliefs and
speech, not about who may attend meetings.
I have read the oral argument transcript several
times. And it is clear to me that Breyer believes an
all comers membership policy is silly and completely
inconsistent with a marketplace of ideas in which
many groups with different beliefs debate and
express different ideas from very different
perspectives.
Rick Duncan
Rick Duncan
Welpton Professor of Law
University of Nebraska College of Law
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902
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