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My current scholarship brings questions of political theory to bear upon historical and theoretical dimensions of the First Amendment.

My publications include an article in the Tulane Law Review on the history of the right of assembly, an article in the Tennessee Law Review on the origins of the right of association, an article in the Marquette Law Review on charitable solicitation law, and an article in the Human Rights Review on the role of forgiveness in transitional justice. These articles are available for download on my SSRN page.

My book manuscript is titled The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly. It traces the disappearance of the freedom of assembly from political and legal discourse during the era of mid-twentieth century pluralism and the ensuing rise of the right of association. My primary objective is to nuance current discussions about group autonomy with greater historical, legal, and theoretical sophistication. Most academic and political arguments mistakenly rely on a truncated history of the constitutional protections for group autonomy that begins with the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Roberts v. United States Jaycees. But Roberts built upon the Court’s recognition during the late 1950s of a previously unknown right of association, which was itself preceded by the right of assembly. I provide the first comprehensive consideration of assembly since the emergence of the right of association, and the only recent work that compares the doctrinal differences between assembly and association.

The issues of group autonomy encompassed by assembly, association, and state power matter deeply. They matter to the Jaycees, the group on the losing end of the Supreme Court’s Roberts decision. They matter to the Chi Iota Colony of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, a now defunct Jewish social group at the College of Staten Island that had sought to limit its membership to men. They matter to the Christian Legal Society at Hastings Law School, a student group denied official recognition by the school for its desire to limit its membership to Christians who adhered to its moral code (which included a prohibition on homosexual conduct). Each of these groups sought to maintain an unpopular composition and message in the face of antidiscrimination laws. Each was denied associational protections. Each was forced to change its composition (and therefore its message). Each no longer exists in the form it once held and desired to maintain. The case out of Hastings Law School, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, is before the Supreme Court for the 2009 term. My recently completed article draft, “The Unsettling ‘Well-Settled’ Law of Freedom of Association” brings some of my doctrinal and theoretical scholarship to bear upon this timely case.

In a more theoretical section of my book, I explore the insights that assembly provides to contemporary debates over the boundaries of group autonomy. I argue that the loss of assembly weakens group autonomy by suppressing dissent, privatizing action, and constraining expression. These changes are related to each other: they are all methods of control. Collectively, they open the door for the state to impose meaning, purpose, and value on groups and their practices. I build upon some of these themes in two articles that fall outside of the book project. My draft article, “Constitutional Salience Revisited,” reorients Frederick Schauer’s approach to the First Amendment to highlight the ways in which the contours of the First Amendment are shaped more determinatively by the state’s expressive restrictions than by any of the myriad theories that purportedly underlie free expression. Recognizing that state power also constrains expression in more pedestrian ways, my article in the Marquette Law Review explores how regulation of charitable solicitation threatens the health and vibrancy of important aspects of civil society.

The final chapter of my book manuscript explores the contribution of my work on assembly to questions of religious group autonomy. Claims of religious freedom have increasingly been resolved under an attenuated free exercise right or treated as analogous to speech or association. I explore the weaknesses of these approaches and contend that the right of assembly offers greater protection for religious groups. My argument assumes that these groups seek to live out of a political space distinct from that assumed by the nation-state. While this approach will not satisfy all religious believers, I offer it as a partial response to free exercise arguments that is neither political liberalism nor theocratic hegemony. This middle ground owes much to the influence of one of my teachers, Stanley Hauerwas, but I reject some of Hauerwas’s vagueness and rhetoric. Another draft article, “The Limits of Integrity: Dworkin’s Interpretive Theory and the Public Reason Problem,” uses Hauerwas to critique Ronald Dworkin’s theory of interpretation and shows not only why Dworkin has failed to escape John Rawls’s political liberalism but also how Hauerwas’s alternative vision might be sharpened in religious discourse and practice. I elaborate upon the comparison between Hauerwas and Dworkin and the ways in which Wittgenstein informs both of their interpretive theories in my short essay, “Teaching Law and Scripture.”