Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom

Sprednja platnica
Oxford University Press, 1999 - 174 strani
Ever since the Supreme Court began enforcing the First Amendment's religion clauses in the 1940s, courts and scholars have tried to distill the meaning of those clauses into a useable principle of religious freedom. In this highly original work, Smith criticizes the main positions in the debate and explains their misconceptions. He argues that efforts to find a principle of religious freedom in the "original meaning" are fruitless because the clauses were purely jurisdictional in nature: they were meant to place authority over questions of religion with the states, and nothing more. Contending that the perennial quest to distill religious freedom into a "principle," is futile, Smith advocates a fundamental reassessment of the premises upon which courts have proceeded in this area.
 

Izbrane strani

Vsebina

Rethinking Rethinking Religious Liberty
3
The Jurisdictional Character of the Religion Clauses
17
Is the Free Exercise Clause Different?
35
The Nullification of Original Meaning
45
The Theory Project
55
The Fundamental Conundrum
63
The Pursuit of Neutrality
77
A Secular Theory of Religious Freedom?
99
Normative Questions
119
Notes
129
Index
169
Avtorske pravice

Pogosti izrazi in povedi

O avtorju (1999)

Steven D. Smith is Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. He has taught and published extensively on legal subjects, including constitutional law and jurisprudence.

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