Is this arbitration?: Religious tribunals, judicial review, and due process

Religious tribunals in the United States regularly adjudicate cases in the same manner as conventional arbitrations. Both federal and state courts enforce religious tribunal decisions under,the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) or under state statutes modeled on the Uniform Arbitration Act (UAA), thereby transforming the decisions into binding legal judgments. In light of that result, the FAA and UAA provide a statutory standard of review that ensures that a minimum level of due process has been followed. A significant problem arises in FAA and UAA review of religious panels, however, because the religious question doctrine prohibits civil courts from reviewing religious questions. Superficially, the prohibition does not seem to affect court review because disputes often appear wholly secular, stemming out of contract, employment, and corporate law issues. This Note argues, however, that religious issues permeate the entirety of religious tribunal proceedings, which inevitably leads to substantial restrictions on judicial review. It analyzes judicial doctrines that courts employ when confronting religious disputes and argues that these doctrines cannot prevent the restrictions on FAA and UAA review. This Note posits that this further limitation diminishes the standard of review far beyond that required by either the FAA or UAA and gives rise to procedural due Process violations. The Note proposes that to maintain the viability of treating religious panels as statutory arbitrations, courts must be willing to engage in a minimum level of religious question review, and argues that courts can engage constitutionally in such inquiry for purposes of FAA and UAA review.