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Rise and Fall of Religious Freedom in Constitutional Discourse

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Rise and Fall of Religious Freedom in Constitutional Discourse THE RISE AND FALL OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN CONSTITUTIONAL DISCOURSE STEVEN D. SMiTH- The thesis of this Article can be succinctly stated: our constitu- tional commitment to religious freedom contains a fatal internal flaw-a propensity toward self-cancellation. This internal flaw has manifested itself in our recent constitutional history. The intelli- gent constitutional commitment to religious freedom that once existed in this country has deteriorated,1 and this deterioration is due, in significant measure, not to a decline in religiosity in either the general or the legal culture, but rather to the self-negating quality of the commitment itself. This self-negating propensity stems from the paradoxical relationship between religious freedom's historical justification and its current interpretation. The principal historical justification for our constitutional commitment to religious freedom was a religious rationale. 2 The justification relied upon religious premises and worked within a religious world view.3 Moreover, quite apart from its historical significance, the religious justification is also the most satisfying, and perhaps the only adequate justification for a special constitutional commitment to religious liberty. Today, however, religious freedom, at least as it has come to be understood, forbids governmental reliance upon religious justifications as a basis for public policies or decisions. 4 Therein lies the paradox-our constitutional commitment to religious freedom undermines its own foundation; it cancels itself out by precluding government from recognizing and acting upon the principal justification supporting that commitment. If correct, the thesis that religious liberty is self-negating will explain a good deal. It is by now notorious that legal doctrines and t Professor of Law, University of Colorado. I thankJanet Burton, Rick Collins, Cole Durham, Fred Gedicks,Jim Gordon,JulianJohnson, Bill Marshall, Oscar Miller, Chris Mueller, Bob Nagel, Gene Nichol, and Kevin Reitz for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this Article. Parts of the Article were presented in the Austin W. Scott, Jr. Lecture at the University of Colorado. I received numerous helpful comments, questions, and objections from persons who attended the lecture. 1 See infra part V. 2 See infra part I.A. 3 See infra part I.B. 4 See infra part III.A. (149) 150 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 140:149 judicial decisions in the area of religious freedom are in serious disarray. In perhaps no other area of constitutional law have 5 confusion and inconsistency achieved such undisputed sovereignty. This Article suggests that the internal, self-negating quality of our commitment to religious freedom renders us incapable of interpret- ing and applying that commitment in a coherent fashion. In addition to doctrinal confusion, the law in this area has lately exhibited a marked insensitivity to the value of what it is ostensibly designed to protect-the freedom of citizens to believe and practice their religion. This insensitivity is especially evident in recent decisions under the Free Exercise Clause, but it is manifest in other areas as well. 6 It would be easy to blame this relaxation of protec- tion on a growing secularism that marginalizes religious belief and practice. But that easy explanation is inconsistent with survey and sociological evidence indicating that religious belief has not declined in this country.7 I will argue that the waning of our constitutional commitment to religious liberty need not be ex- plained by any deterioration in religious commitment. Rather, the phenomenon results from the self-canceling character of the commitment itself. Thus, the thesis of this Article has considerable explanatory value-if, that is, the thesis is not implausible. But that is an important reservation. Legal disputes raising issues of religious freedom are as numerous today as ever, and they often elicitjudicial pronouncements paying respect to the importance of religious freedom in our constitutional scheme. These pronouncements may seem to contradict the contention that our commitment to religious freedom has dwindled. I can offer no quick answer to this objection, but its force can perhaps be blunted by a preliminary clarification of what I will argue. My contention that there is at present no intelligent constitutional commitment to religious freedom should not be 5 See, e.g., Carl H. Esbeck, The Lemon Test: Should It Be Retained, Reformulated or Rejected?, 4 NOTRE DAME J.L. ETHIcs & PUB. POL'Y 513, 543 (1990) ("It is hard to think of a contemporary legal doctrine that is as besieged from all quarters as [current Establishment Clause doctrine]."); Stanley Ingber, Religion or Ideology: A Needed Clarificationofthe Religion Clauses, 41 STAN. L. REV. 233,233 (1989) (observing that "few areas of constitutional law lie in greater confusion"). For further discussion of the prevailing incoherence, see infra part V.A. 6 For a gloomy assessment of recent developments, see Douglas Laycock, The Remnants of Free Exercise, 1990 Sup. CT. REV. 1 and infra part V.B. 7 See infra part II.B. 1991] RISE AND FALL OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM understood to assert more than it actually claims. For example, in denying that there is an "intelligent" constitutional commitment to religious freedom, I acknowledge that there may be a commitment that is merely traditional or instinctual,8 but that is not based on consciously understood and currently believable grounds. In addition, a constitutional commitment to religious freedom is not the same as actual religious freedom; either might exist without the other.9 Hence, in arguing that there is no intelligent constitutional commitment to religious freedom I do not deny that a considerable measure of actual religious freedom continues to exist in this country. Furthermore, I am speaking about a specific constitutional commitment to religious freedom. It is possible that there is a commitment to other kinds of freedom-general personal autonomy, perhaps, or freedom of belief-and that religious conduct or belief may sometimes fall within these other categories.10 One might hold, for example, that a person is free to be a pantheist simply because pantheism is a belief and citizens have a constitutional right to believe whatever they choose. The fact that pantheism is a religious belief would be irrelevant to this claim. I do not deny the existence of constitutional commitments to various kinds of freedoms that may sometimes happen to protect religious beliefs or practices. I contend only that there was once an intelligent constitutional commitment to religiousfreedom specifically, and that this commitment has seriously deteriorated. That deterioration is due in part, I will argue, to the conceptual paradox that has caused our constitutional commitment to religious freedom to cancel itself out. This contention also warrants preliminary clarification. First, I will focus on one intellectual strand in a complex historical and cultural tapestry. The strand I 8 This statement is not meant to disparage an instinctual commitment to religious freedom. An instinctual commitment may be better than none at all. One might even argue that a purely instinctual commitment is more secure than a conscious and rational one, although the analysis presented in this Article, particularlyin part IV.H., questions that proposition. 9 For example, a legal community might have a commitment to religious freedom yet lack the will or the resources to carry out that commitment. Conversely, a legal community might have no commitment to religious freedom, but for other reasons (perhaps because the community is generally indifferent to religion or adheres to a policy of general laissez faire) religious freedom might nonetheless flourish. 10 See generally William P. Marshall, Solving the Free Exercise Dilemma: Free Exercise as Expression, 67 MINN. L. REV. 545 (1983) (arguing for protection of free exercise rights through the Free Speech Clause). 152 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 140:149 have chosen to examine is a central one, but I do not mean to imply that it represents the whole picture. Second, even with respect to the intellectual strand I am considering, I do not mean to suggest there is anything compulsory or logically inescapable about the conceptual paradox. We-the constitutional community, including especially the Supreme Court and those who criticize or prescribe to it-might have avoided the paradox by thinking more carefully about the meaning of religious freedom. Specifically, we might have avoided the paradox by declining to adopt an interpretation holding that governmental reliance upon religiousjustifications is incompati- ble with a commitment to religious freedom. It is even possible that we still can dissolve the paradox and escape the malaise that currently afflicts constitutional musings on the matter of religious freedom (although at the moment I see little reason for optimism on this score). The paradox, in short, describes the course our thinking about religious freedom has taken, not a course that our thinking was or is compelled to take. Part I discusses the religious justification and argues for the central importance of thatjustification in generating a commitment to religious freedom in the founding period. Part II describes the disappearance of the religious justification from contemporary constitutional discourse. It also considers and rejects the view that would explain this disappearance by an assumption that
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