“Contemplation of Justice” by James Earle Fraser, US Supreme Court, DC, USA (US-PD).
In October, Canopy Forum, hosted by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, will be organizing an online book symposium regarding Donald L. Drakeman’s upcoming book, to be published November 2026, titled The Free Exercise Clause and the Rights of Conscience (Harvard University Press). Participants will be discussing the new book, which will be hosted and published on Canopy Forum and discuss themes, ideas, and engage with Drakeman’s argument.
In the Free Exercise Clause and the Rights of Conscience, Donald Drakeman demonstrates that some readings of the First Amendment are dramatically overbroad. Numerous newly available sources clearly show that when the Bill of Rights was ratified, Americans understood “free exercise of religion” as a well-established term of art referring solely to the ability to hold public worship services. That meaning remained unchanged well into the twentieth century. Time and again, when believers asked the courts for conscience-based exemptions from statutes, judges turned them down, telling them to address the legislature instead. It was only in the mid-twentieth century that the Supreme Court radically reimagined the Free Exercise Clause, granting religious exemptions from statutory duties for the first time in American history.
As a result, today’s Free Exercise Clause bears little resemblance to that of the framers and the American tradition of religious liberty. Given the Supreme Court’s heavy emphasis on original meaning and tradition when interpreting the Constitution, Drakeman’s discovery could have significant implications for the future of conscience-based exemptions and the First Amendment itself. ♦
Stay tuned for the date and registration link.
Donald L. Drakeman J.D., Ph.D., is Distinguished Research Professor in the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame and a Fellow of the Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise at the University of Cambridge.
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