“Congress shall make no law reflecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The First Amendment aims to separate church and state, but Kent Greenawalt examines many situations in which its two clauses—the Nonestablishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause—point in opposite directions. How should courts decide?

“I believe that complete separation of church and state is one of those miraculous things which can be best for religion and best for the state, and the best for those who are religious and those who are not religious.” – Leo Pfeffer Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. These sixteen words epitomize a radical experiment unique in human history . . . It is the purpose of this book to examine how this experiment came to be made, what are the implications and consequences of its application to democratic living in America today, and what are the forces seeking to frustrate and defeat that experiment. (From the Foreword)

Randall P. Bezanson discusses in depth nine legal cases which have significantly helped to define the limits of press freedom in America. Ranging across issues of victim identification, political bias & public interest, this is a detailed examination of what 'freedom of the press' actually means in the US.

The Culture Of Disbelief has been the subject of an enormous amount of media attention from the first moment it was published. Hugely successful in hardcover, the Anchor paperback is sure to find a large audience as the ever-increasing, enduring debate about the relationship of church and state in America continues. In The Culture Of Disbelief, Stephen Carter explains how we can preserve the vital separation of church and state while embracing rather than trivializing the faith of millions of citizens or treating religious believers with disdain. What makes Carter's work so intriguing is that he uses liberal means to arrive at what are often considered conservative ends. Explaining how preserving a special role for religious communities can strengthen our democracy, The Culture Of Disbelief recovers the long tradition of liberal religious witness (for example, the antislavery, antisegregation, and Vietnam-era antiwar movements). Carter argues that the problem with the 1992 Republican convention was not the fact of open religious advocacy, but the political positions being advocated.

An insightful rethinking of the meaning of the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom. The Founders understood religious liberty to be an inalienable natural right. Vincent Phillip Muñoz explains what this means for church-state constitutional law, uncovering what we can and cannot determine about the original meanings of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses and constructing a natural rights jurisprudence of religious liberty. Drawing on early state constitutions, declarations of religious freedom, Founding-era debates, and the First Amendment’s drafting record, Muñoz demonstrates that adherence to the Founders’ political philosophy would lead neither to consistently conservative nor consistently liberal results. Rather, adopting the Founders’ understanding would lead to a minimalist church-state jurisprudence that, in most cases, would return authority from the judiciary to the American people. Thorough and convincing, Religious Liberty and the American Founding is key reading for those seeking to understand the Founders’ political philosophy of religious freedom and the First Amendment Religion Clauses.

lt is a commonplace that law and morality intersect and interpenetrate in all the areas of legal decision-making; that in order to make sense of constitutional, statutory or common-law questions, judges and other legal decision-makers must first resolve certain philosophical issues which include moral judgments of right and wrang_ This is particularly evident with regard to constitutional interpretation, especially when constitutions give a mandate for the protection of the substantive norms and values entrenched as constitutional rights. In these Situations, as a leading contemporary legal philosopher observed, the "Constitution fuses legal and moral issues, by making the validity of a law depend on an answer to complex moral 1 problems". But the need for substantive value elucidation is not confined, of course, only to constitutional interpretation under Bills of Rights. This, however, immediately raises a dilemma stemming from the moral diversity and pluralism of modern liberal societies. How can law remain sensitive to this pluralism and yet provide clear answers to the problems which call for a legal resolution? Sharply conflicting values in modern societies clash in the debates over the death penalty, abortion, homosexuality, separation of state and religion, the scope of the freedom of the press, or affirmative action. lt would often be difficult to discern a broader consensus within which these clashes of values operate, unless this consensus were described in such vague terms as to render it practically meaningless.

This book introduces political science of religion – a coherent approach to the study of the political role of religion grounded in political science. In this framework, religion is viewed as a political ideology providing legitimation for power and motivating political attitudes and behaviors of the public. Religious organizations are political actors negotiating the political system in the pursuit of their faith-based objectives. Religion is thus interpreted as a power resource and religious groups as political players. The theoretical framework developed in the first part is applied to the study of theocracies and contemporary democracies, based on the case studies of Poland and the USA. The empirical analysis of resources, strategies and opportunities of religious actors demonstrates their ability to influence the politics of democracies and non-democracies alike. Using a multilevel approach, the book seeks to explain this tremendous political potential of religion.