Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom

by Steven D. Smith

Book Overview

Ever since the Supreme Court began enforcing the First Amendment's religion clauses in the 1940s, courts and scholars have tried to distill the meaning of those clauses into a useable principle of religious freedom. In this highly original work, Smith criticizes the main positions in the debate and explains their misconceptions. He argues that efforts to find a principle of religious freedom in the "original meaning" are fruitless because the clauses...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195132483
• ISBN13: 9780195132489
• Release Date: April 1999
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.0"