Here’s an interesting NYT story about succession disputes raging in the Satmar community — a sect of Hasidic Judaism — that have heated up in the wake of the recent death of the Satmars’ grand rebbe. One of my upcoming projects will deal with religious communities as First Amendment institutions and, perforce, with the issue of deciding religious disputes in civil courts. Until I do the work, I’ll leave this as an “interesting story; thoughts?”-type post. Well, perhaps one observation, which is that reading this story suggests to me that the arguments over how civil courts should decide religious disputes don’t easily map onto a Roger Williams-type, “spare the religious garden from the secular wilderness” kind of argument — because, as the story makes clear, both parties have eagerly and repeatedly sought to bring their dispute into the civil courts. Understandably so, may I add, even if religious passions were not engaged, given the amount of money that’s involved.
Posted by Paul Horwitz on April 25, 2006 at 07:10 PM