Scot M Peterson
Working Papers & Projects
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Projects/ Working Papers |
Balliol
College, Oxford |
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D. Phil. Thesis My
D.Phil. Thesis began with my frustration with First Amendment jurisprudence
in the United States. I believed that the
religion clauses had been included because of the British history of
establishment and restrictions on religious freedom and that research into
the historical consequences of that establishment and those restrictions
might inform a more functional approach to constitutional jurisprudence. As
it turned out, I addressed the religious establishments in England, Scotland
and Wales in the twentieth century, particularly in connection with statutory
changes in their constitutional status during the inter-war period. One of
two acts passed over the objection of the House of Lords following the
adoption of the Parliament Act, 1911 was the act disestablishing the Church
of England in Wales and Monmouthshire. Parliament postponed most of the
operation of that act during the war, but restored all of the church’s assets
in 1919 when it made disestablishment final (indeed, the church made a tidy
profit from the transaction). In Scotland, Parliament ring-fenced the courts’
jurisdiction to prevent judicial interference in matters of doctrine,
worship, government and discipline and also rationalized (to some degree)
that church’s income stream from teinds (the Scottish version of tithe, a
form of land tax). Finally, in England the church became more independent
when the Church of England National Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919 instituted a
process whereby the church could initiate its own legislation, which could
then be approved (but not amended) by Parliament. All
of these historical events involved substantial real costs and transaction
costs. They show that while religious establishment may be an interesting
cultural artifact, it is not a particularly efficient way of allocating time,
effort, political resources and (most importantly) money in a diverse,
liberal society. Publication of Thesis I am currently working on revising my
thesis for publication as a book. Although the thesis takes a highly
materialistic approach to the historical events it describes, I have come to
question whether the approach is not more reductionist than it should be.
Thus, in preparation for expanding it into a work directed primarily at
historians, I intend to spend some time carefully addressing the intellectual
history of ‘religious establishment’ as it changed during the late-nineteenth
and early-twentieth centuries. |
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Current Research · Law, Religion and
Politics. o
Religion, the Scottish Enlightenment and
constitutional law in the United States o
Religious Beliefs and Voting Patterns in the House of
Commons, 1906-36 o
Religion, Law and Property: How Do Courts Decide
Property Questions in the Constext of Religious Organizations? · The Economics of
Religion o
Defining Religious Regulation: Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and the
Viability of the Religious Marketplace o
What are Religious Products? How does the production of religious goods
affect society for better and/or for worse? |
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