Rick Garnett: How the No-Establishment Rule Does (and Does Not) Protect the Freedom of Conscience
Richard W. Garnett writing at Public Discourse (Witherspoon Institute):
The “separation of church and state,” it turns out, is a powerful structural principle; it is a principle of pluralism, of multiple and overlapping authorities, of competing loyalties and demands. It is a rule that limits the state (not a program of marginalizing or privatizing religion) and thereby clears out and protects a social space, within which persons are formed and educated, and without which the liberty of conscience is vulnerable. The no-establishment rule, then, protects the liberty of conscience primarily by respecting and protecting the independence of non-state authority.