As I've said earlier, I'm sympathetic to Richard's argument inasmuch as confession is in fact part of a complex (required) sacramental process. But the point is that (I think) that's relatively unusual, certainly not present, so far as I am aware, in Judaism, for example. Am I correct in believing that the ingestion of peyote was in fact a sacramental aspect of the Native American church?
sandy From: religionlaw-bounces+slevinson=law.utexas....@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-bounces+slevinson=law.utexas....@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Dougherty Sent: Friday, December 06, 2013 6:09 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: The clergy-penitent privilege and burdens on third parties I will confess to not having read the state cases, or at least not most of them. But isn't the question whether the privilege is constitutionally required? (Perhaps the fact that it is referred to as a privilege muddies the waters.) If free exercise of religion includes receiving a sacrament, then why is compelling violation of the privilege not a constitutional issue? Indeed, I wonder why a recent discussion suggested stronger free speech claims than free exercise claims; does the First Amendment make that distinction? I have no doubt courts have read it that way, but that's partly why we get distortions of free exercise claims masquerading as free speech claims. Richard Dougherty University of Dallas On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 1:17 PM, <hamilto...@aol.com<mailto:hamilto...@aol.com>> wrote: With all due respect to this entire thread, how many people have actually read the state cases involving the priest-penitent privilege? There is a level of abstraction to this discussion that indicates to me probably not. As someone who has actively been involved in arguing the issue in court in the last year, I'd suggest that the law is more reticulated and specific. state-by-state, than the speculation going on here. It is state law, which means 50 states plus DC law, and it is a privilege that is not constitutionally required, particularly when the issue is whether the religious confessor or confessee engaged in illegal behavior. Marci A. Hamilton Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Yeshiva University 55 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10003 (212) 790-0215 http://sol-reform.com<http://sol-reform.com/> [http://sol-reform.com/fb.png]<https://www.facebook.com/professormarciahamilton?fref=ts> [http://www.sol-reform.com/tw.png] <https://twitter.com/marci_hamilton> -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Lund <l...@wayne.edu<mailto:l...@wayne.edu>> To: 'Law & Religion issues for Law Academics' <religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu<mailto:religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu>> Sent: Fri, Dec 6, 2013 10:06 am Subject: RE: The clergy-penitent privilege and burdens on third parties Again, I'm late-sorry about that. But honestly people, it's shocking how many posts are written between the hours of 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. Who can keep up? So this may backtrack, but I've been thinking about the earlier posts in this thread. Say there are no secular analogies to the priest-penitent privilege. Does that, in itself, justify the conclusion that it is favoritism for religion?
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
