Law Commons^™

The Justice Who Wouldn't Be Lutheran: Toward Borrowing The Wisdom Of Faith Traditions, Marie A. Failinger

Cleveland State Law Review

Only a few legal scholars have attempted to work out what jurisprudence might look like if lawmakers and judges took their religious world-views seriously-and explicitly-in their work, in a way respectful of "the fact of pluralism." My task is to imagine the concrete case: what a judge's jurisprudence might look like if a judge considered the wisdom of his own religious tradition in constitutional cases. This article explores broad jurisprudential themes and specific First Amendment and social welfare opinions of Justice William Rehnquist, who for some years has been a member of a Lutheran congregation, my own denomination. While Justice …