Peter Edman
I’m very pleased to see news of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Cutter v. Wilkinson, upholding a section of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act ("RLUIPA") that protects the religious exercise of prisoners.
There is commentary and further information at The Becket Fund.
The Becket Fund drafted and filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in Cutter on behalf of over fifty religious and civil rights organizations, ranging from People for the American Way to the American Center for Law and Justice. Denominational groups on the brief included Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, Sikhs, and others.
Useful commentary also from Notre Dame professor Richard Garnett on National Review Online, including a commendation of Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion.
Finally, engaged readers and constitutional-law students should spend some time with Justice Thomas’s typically provocative concurring opinion. In that opinion, he restates his view that the Establishment Clause has been badly misunderstood over the last 50 years, and converted from a federalism provision — one that protected the states’ church-state arrangements from federal interference — to a general requirement that governments not endorse or even acknowledge religion. As he did in Elk Grove School District v. Newdow, last year’s Pledge of Allegiance case, Justice Thomas reminds us that the Establishment Clause prohibited Congress “from enacting legislation ‘respecting an establishment of religion’; it does not prohibit Congress from enacting legislation ‘respecting religion’ or ‘taking cognizance of religion.’” The act, he noted, “is a law respecting religion, but not one respecting an establishment of religion.” To be sure, when it comes to the religion clause, Justice Thomas appears to be alone, or at least lonely, on the Court. Still, he is doing us all a service by challenging us to rethink longstanding, but possibly ill-founded, premises and doctrines.
Gleanings, Religious Liberty, Wed 01 Jun 2005
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell
