Three Questions About Hybrid Rights and Religious Groups

Gedicks, Frederick Mark

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Three Questions About Hybrid Rights and Religious Groups

Yale Law Journal Pocket Part, Vol. 117, p. 192, 2008

6 Pages Posted: 5 Feb 2008 Last revised: 9 Jun 2015

See all articles by Frederick Mark Gedicks

Frederick Mark Gedicks

Brigham Young University - J. Reuben Clark Law School

Abstract

This paper is a comment on Murad Hussain, Defending the Faithful: Speaking the Language of Group Harm in Free Exercise Challenges to Counterterrorism, 117 Yale Law Journal 920 (2008), which argues that burdens imposed upon Muslim religious practices by post-9/11 counterterrorism policies would be relieved by a new doctrine combining hybrid rights and religious group rights to protect certain kinds of public religious group expression.

This comment argues that Mr. Hussain fails to establish that hybrid rights and group rights are viable constitutional doctrines, fails to explain why these purported doctrines should be deployed to protect outwardly directed religious group expression but not private religious group devotion, and fails to defend the extension of this protection to religious minority groups but not secular minority groups. The comment concludes that Mr. Hussain has identified a serious gap in American constitutional doctrine that his proposal nonetheless fails to fill.

Keywords: group rights, religion clauses, hybrid rights, free exercise, religious expression, counter-terrorism

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Gedicks, Frederick Mark, Three Questions About Hybrid Rights and Religious Groups. Yale Law Journal Pocket Part, Vol. 117, p. 192, 2008, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1090427