Law Commons^™

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

Faculty Scholarship

Although many authors have debated the propriety of the use of religious arguments in public policy discussions and lawmaking, few have critically reviewed the jurisprudence of particular judges through the lens of their own faith-traditions. Preliminarily, this article attempts a modest contribution to the discussion about the use of religious argument in public discussions by suggesting that judicial opinions should be viewed rhetorically and that religious assumptions and claims may legitimately be "borrowed" analogically into such opinions, at least their forensic and epideictic elements. More concretely, it analyzes themes in some of Justice William Rehnquist's opinions to determine how consistent …