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Play In The Joints Between The Religion Clauses' And Other Supreme Court Catachreses, Carl H. Esbeck
Play In The Joints Between The Religion Clauses' And Other Supreme Court Catachreses, Carl H. Esbeck
Faculty Publications
Consistent with its fumbling of late when dealing with cases involving religion, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken to reciting the metaphor of play in the joints between the Religion Clauses. This manner of framing the issue before the Court presumes that the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses run in opposing directions, and indeed will often conflict. It then becomes the Court's task, as it sees it, to determine if the law in question falls safely in the narrows where there is space for legislative action neither compelled by the Free Exercise Clause nor prohibited by the Establishment Clause. The …
Governance And The Religion Question: Voluntaryism, Disestablishment, And America's Church-State Proposition, Carl H. Esbeck
Governance And The Religion Question: Voluntaryism, Disestablishment, And America's Church-State Proposition, Carl H. Esbeck
Faculty Publications
The quandary over how to structure the relationship between religion and the civil state is an ancient one. From the perspective of political philosophy this is the religion question, and events over many centuries have proven that the answer is easy to get wrong. Religion, by its very definition, is the fixed point from which all else is surveyed. It is about ultimate matters, both micro and macro. Hence, religion addresses the irreducible core of personhood and its meaning, while at the same time religion embraces a worldview that transcends and encompasses everything else. Religion generates intense emotions that when …