Professor Jim Oleske Earns Second Huffman Award for Scholarship on Free Exercise Clause

Lewis & Clark Law’s annual Huffman Scholarship Award recognizes outstanding faculty scholarship and writing. Each year, a three-member committee of faculty peers chooses an award winner based on scholarship written in the year prior. Named for Emeritus Dean and Professor James Huffman, the award aims to celebrate an ongoing commitment to scholarship.

In 2020, Professor Jim Oleske was the first recipient of the award for his paper, Free Exercise (Dis)Honesty.

Five years later, Professor Oleske was selected for the 2025 Huffman award, for his paper, Free Exercise Uncertainty: Original Meaning? History and Tradition? Pragmatic Nuance? published by Wayne Law Review (2024).

In his article, Professor Oleske explores the potential paths forward for the Supreme Court’s unsettled jurisprudence on religious-exemption rights. “Such rights have become an intensely debated topic, both in the courts and in the political realm, and five members of the current Court have expressed an interest in reconsidering a landmark 1990 decision on the issue: Employment Division v. Smith,” Oleske explained. “But there remains considerable uncertainty as to what broader doctrinal framework might replace Smith in the event the Court overrules it.”

Against that background, Oleske’s article analyzes whether compelling arguments for free exercise exemption rights can be grounded in originalism, history and tradition, or analogies to modern free speech doctrine. Oleske concludes that the final path is “the most promising prospect for exemption proponents,” and explains that “it points towards an approach in which courts would apply modestly heightened scrutiny to denials of religious exemptions.”

Professor Oleske teaches courses in Constitutional Law, Law and Religion, and Torts at Lewis & Clark. Along with his Huffman Award acknowledgements, he was the 2014 recipient of the Leo Levensen Award for excellence in teaching and was a 2019 Fulbright Scholar based at Cardiff University’s Center for Law and Religion.