Science, Freedom of Conscience and the Establishment Clause

The Constitution presupposes no Supreme Being, institutes no particular truth and contemplates a legal order that is similarly open. The establishment clause maintains constitutional democracy on those terms by invalidating any encroachment on freedom of conscience which religion wielding the power of the state can devise. This Article is an extended defense of that strong conception of the establishment clause. It is in part a reply to those, like Louisell, who have argued that strict construction theories of the clause "establish" something called "The Religion of Secular Humanism." It is in part an attack on the idea that the establishment clause mandates accommodations of religion beyond what the free exercise clause requires.

It is in part an attempt to dispel the confusion in the cases on which both of those arguments rely. Above all, however, this article is an attempt to give a definitive account of the liberal' conception of the Constitution and the clause which apologists of religion have decried for decades, but which has never played the role in the cases which those apologists, in their anxiety, ascribe to it.