liberty to impose moral beliefs on others?,” has
raised the issue of whether there should be a
corollary to the First Amendment freedom of
religion. That corollary would be freedom from
religion. Moyers summarized, “Our practical
solution is ...protect freedom of religion ...and
protect freedom from religion.”
This idea is getting a lot of attention (Mutch,
2014), especially in the aftermath of the United
States Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision in
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014). On
one side is what has been called “the religious
right.” Republican Governor of Louisiana
Bobby Jindal (2014) has recently stated that
Today’s world is increasingly hostile to
matters of faith.... American culture has
in many ways become a secular culture.
The American people, whether we know
it or not, are mired in a silent war.
(commencement speech)
The other side adheres to the idea that protection
of religion has gone too far and now religion
enjoys freedoms that are being imposed on
people with other or no such beliefs. Those who
currently seek protection from religion draw
support from another staunch Republican, who
was also a governor (of Illinois), but one who
lived 150 years ago. Robert Ingersoll (1878) said
that
[The Founding Fathers] knew that to put
God in the Constitution was to put man
out. They knew that the recognition of a
Deity would be seized upon by fanatics
and zealots as a pretext for destroying
the liberty of thought. They knew the
terrible history of the church too well to
place in her keeping, or in the keeping
of her God, the sacred rights of man.
(http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/
individuality.html)
To Ingersoll’s concerns we may add those of
Voltaire, writing a century before Ingersoll
about religion and mind control: “Those who
can make you believe absurdities, can make you
commit atrocities.”
As a consequence of the Hobby Lobby Stores,
Inc. case, the contours of First Amendment
freedom of religion are in the process of being
rewritten. In the balance lies the fate of many
cases involving claims of undue influence. It is
far too early to tell how the dust will settle, but it
is already clear that Governor Jindal is partially
right: There is indeed a form of war involving
the appropriate role courts should play when
religious issues are argued before judges.
Undue Influence in Court
In the early will-contest cases, courts formulated
a test for deciding whether undue influence had
been applied to the testator. In essence, the test
articulates what a person must prove when
claiming that undue influence has been applied.
The test is simple but helpful because it paves
the way for understanding why experts should
be allowed to testify in undue-influence cases
and what they must say.
The SODR Test
Because the concept of undue influence is not
well defined, courts have struggled to find a
suitable conceptual framework in which to
evaluate the facts in each case. The most
successful has been the SODR test, which has
the following four elements:
(a) Susceptibility to undue influence
(b) Opportunity to exert influence
(c) Disposition to exert influence
(d) Result of the influence
There is no indication that the courts which have
utilized the SODR test have applied it to the
admissibility of expert testimony. Indeed, there
is almost no information from these courts as to
how the judges applied it, if at all, in reaching
their decisions. But the test does have one aspect
that is of value. It is an indication that some of
the problems discussed earlier involving clarity
and sliding scales can be overcome with a
science-friendly structure for the presentation of
expert evidence and for the determination of
where the point of unacceptable interaction may
occur in a given case.
Social Influence Model (SIM)
I have converted the SODR test into a Social
Influence Model (SIM) for use by experts
76 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015
raised the issue of whether there should be a
corollary to the First Amendment freedom of
religion. That corollary would be freedom from
religion. Moyers summarized, “Our practical
solution is ...protect freedom of religion ...and
protect freedom from religion.”
This idea is getting a lot of attention (Mutch,
2014), especially in the aftermath of the United
States Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision in
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014). On
one side is what has been called “the religious
right.” Republican Governor of Louisiana
Bobby Jindal (2014) has recently stated that
Today’s world is increasingly hostile to
matters of faith.... American culture has
in many ways become a secular culture.
The American people, whether we know
it or not, are mired in a silent war.
(commencement speech)
The other side adheres to the idea that protection
of religion has gone too far and now religion
enjoys freedoms that are being imposed on
people with other or no such beliefs. Those who
currently seek protection from religion draw
support from another staunch Republican, who
was also a governor (of Illinois), but one who
lived 150 years ago. Robert Ingersoll (1878) said
that
[The Founding Fathers] knew that to put
God in the Constitution was to put man
out. They knew that the recognition of a
Deity would be seized upon by fanatics
and zealots as a pretext for destroying
the liberty of thought. They knew the
terrible history of the church too well to
place in her keeping, or in the keeping
of her God, the sacred rights of man.
(http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/
individuality.html)
To Ingersoll’s concerns we may add those of
Voltaire, writing a century before Ingersoll
about religion and mind control: “Those who
can make you believe absurdities, can make you
commit atrocities.”
As a consequence of the Hobby Lobby Stores,
Inc. case, the contours of First Amendment
freedom of religion are in the process of being
rewritten. In the balance lies the fate of many
cases involving claims of undue influence. It is
far too early to tell how the dust will settle, but it
is already clear that Governor Jindal is partially
right: There is indeed a form of war involving
the appropriate role courts should play when
religious issues are argued before judges.
Undue Influence in Court
In the early will-contest cases, courts formulated
a test for deciding whether undue influence had
been applied to the testator. In essence, the test
articulates what a person must prove when
claiming that undue influence has been applied.
The test is simple but helpful because it paves
the way for understanding why experts should
be allowed to testify in undue-influence cases
and what they must say.
The SODR Test
Because the concept of undue influence is not
well defined, courts have struggled to find a
suitable conceptual framework in which to
evaluate the facts in each case. The most
successful has been the SODR test, which has
the following four elements:
(a) Susceptibility to undue influence
(b) Opportunity to exert influence
(c) Disposition to exert influence
(d) Result of the influence
There is no indication that the courts which have
utilized the SODR test have applied it to the
admissibility of expert testimony. Indeed, there
is almost no information from these courts as to
how the judges applied it, if at all, in reaching
their decisions. But the test does have one aspect
that is of value. It is an indication that some of
the problems discussed earlier involving clarity
and sliding scales can be overcome with a
science-friendly structure for the presentation of
expert evidence and for the determination of
where the point of unacceptable interaction may
occur in a given case.
Social Influence Model (SIM)
I have converted the SODR test into a Social
Influence Model (SIM) for use by experts
76 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015
