ND Law’s Program on Church, State & Society Announces 2026 Writing Competition Winners

Notre Dame Law School’s Program on Church, State & Society has announced the winners of its annual writing competition. The competition encourages scholarship exploring the intersections of church, state, and society, particularly how the law structures and governs those relationships.

Steven Tu, a 2026 Notre Dame Law School graduate, won first place for his paper, "Replacing Smith: Reconstructing Scrutiny for Free Exercise." He received a cash prize of $3,000.

His paper examines how courts should evaluate religious accommodation claims if Employment Division v. Smith is overturned, focusing on Sherbert’s scrutiny framework and how courts might revive it. The paper argues that courts can revive that framework without reproducing many of the concerns traditionally associated with it, specifically by reconceiving the tiers of scrutiny not as balancing tests, but as interpretive tools for identifying the scope of the Free Exercise Clause.

“I chose this topic because it brought together my interests in religious liberty, constitutional interpretation, and judicial humility. The paper grew out of a tension I saw between the modern tiers of scrutiny and certain theories of constitutional interpretation, including originalism. Dissatisfied with the idea that courts had to accept scrutiny as-is or abandon it altogether, I became interested in whether they could preserve the framework while reworking it to better respond to those concerns,” said Tu. “The Free Exercise context offered a promising way to explore that compromise. A revised scrutiny framework could provide a workable approach to religious accommodations, one that imposes meaningful limits while still protecting religious exercise in a manner consistent with the First Amendment’s original scope.”

Second place was awarded to Isabel Wolfson Zelig, a 2026 Harvard Law School graduate, for her paper, “Binding Beyond the State: Defining ‘Religion’ in the Free Exercise Clause.” She received a cash prize of $2,000.

Her paper argues that the Court should adopt a non-theistic definition of religion for Free Exercise purposes. Drawing on the text and structure of the First Amendment, as well as a historical analysis of how societies beyond England understood religion, the paper contends that religion should be defined as a set of obligations arising from a source beyond civil authority and preceding civil law. Examining four distinct societies, the paper explores the influences that shaped the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom and highlights the often-overlooked impact of the Mongol Empire’s approach to religion and religious liberty on the development of First Amendment principles.

“I came to this topic through a debate in school over what the Free Exercise Clause actually requires. Assuming the sincerity test is satisfied, it struck me as incoherent to make constitutional protection depend on belief in God, and more incoherent still to strip that protection away the moment someone professes disbelief,” said Zelig. “The deeper I went into how different societies have treated religion, and into what the Founders themselves wrote about religion, the Free Exercise Clause, and religious freedom, the more convinced I became that this could not be the case. What sharpened the project further was realizing that nearly every originalist treatment of this question had landed on a theistic definition. I think history points the other way.”

Sam Foer, a rising 3L at Washington & Lee University School of Law, was awarded third place for his paper, “Conditions of Belief: Free Exercise, State Action, and the Faculty of Conscience.” He received a cash prize of $1,000.

His paper argues that modern governance increasingly threatens religious liberty not through direct coercion or neutral conduct regulation under Employment Division v. Smith, but by structuring the informational and social conditions under which beliefs are formed. Drawing on cases like Murthy v. Missouri, it develops a faculty-based framework that protects the interior capacities of constitutional agency—conscience, judgment, and related faculties—that the Constitution presupposes as preconditions for the meaningful exercise of enumerated rights, while offering a limiting principle to distinguish permissible influence from unconstitutional impairment.

“I was drawn to this topic because the Constitution’s protection of belief has always been understood as absolute, yet contemporary tools of governance—platform pressure, algorithmic curation, and sustained state influence over information environments—operate on the conditions of belief formation in ways existing doctrine struggles to address,” said Foer. “Competing in the Church, State & Society contest was an ideal opportunity to explore how religious institutions and the faculty of conscience can serve as bulwarks for cognitive sovereignty in the algorithmic and technological age.”

Amir S. Downing, a rising 3L at University of Virginia School of Law, received Honorable Mention for his paper, “Religious Land Use Exceptionalism: The Meaning of “Substantial Burden” in RLUIPA,” and received a cash prize of $500.

His paper analyzes the consequences of an increasingly permissive understanding of religious freedom in the land-use context. Under the dominant view, RLUIPA can be used to avoid land-use regulation altogether, while also providing a vehicle for protecting important religious land uses left unprotected by Supreme Court jurisprudence.

“I wanted to understand how courts either protect or don’t protect religious exercise that depends on access to land and property. Religious practice takes many forms, some of which depend on specific pieces of land being used in specific ways that conflict with state and local regulation. In many ways this tension is irreconcilable, so the way that courts balance state interests against religious interests becomes evident in the way our cities, neighborhoods, and communities are designed," said Downing.

The Notre Dame Law School Program on Church, State & Society annual writing competition is open to recent law school graduates not yet practicing law and to law students in good standing enrolled in a J.D., LL.B., LL.M., S.J.D./J.S.D., or Ph.D. program at an ABA-accredited law school in the United States. More information about the competition is here.