John Finnis: Does Free Exercise of Religion Deserve Constitutional Mention?

Does Free Exercise of Religion Deserve Constitutional Mention?
John Finnis, 54 Am. J. Juris. 41 (2009)

(An excerpt is below. To view the full text, please use Westlaw, Lexis, a law library or alternative source.)

[S]ome contemporary American legal and constitutional theorists hold that there is nothing about religion or its free exercise that calls for particular respect, or any mention in constitutional bills of rights. That is the thesis which my lecture concerns. Religion, these theorists hold, has no such dignity, though (they add) history’s testimony to the vulnerability of religions or their adherents, especially their vulnerability to oppression by other faiths, helps explain and in a weak sense justify the First Amendment’s denial of Congressional power to make law either ‘respecting an establishment of religion’ or ‘prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’