A Concrete Example

[Douglas Laycock]

Well, as RFRA's sponsor said at the time, religious liberty is very popular in the abstract, but not very popular in application.  These government agents often place zero value on the /plaintiff's/ religious liberty, and that is all that matters.  And I think that is what Chris meant. 

Quoting Steven Jamar <stevenjamar at gmail.com>:

> I don't think I agree with this.  I think they all value religious liberty a
> great deal, but view the religious as separate from the government in every
> way.  And they are not sensitive to the range of religious experience and
> don't have the imagination or desire to understand the religious experience
> of the other.
> It is not that they don't value religious liberty in the abstract (they
> would not want an established church; they would not want their freedom to
> believe and act in their religious traditions), but they don't understand
> others.  And don't want to make the effort to understand.
>
> So the accommodation/exception claim falls on deaf ears not because they
> don't value religious liberty, but because they don't see it or value it in
> the way it is being asserted.
>
> This may be a distinction without much difference in result, but I think it
> important to understand that unless we can connect our liberty arguments to
> what they do value, we will not be able to reach them.
>
> We all have this attribute.  Marci's take is quite different from mine in
> many ways, but I think we can understand each other because we value the
> idea and think about the idea of religious liberty.  But few people have the
> time or inclination or training to do this sort of thinking and evaluating.
>
> But they do value liberty.
>
> Steve
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 9:03 PM, Douglas Laycock <laycockd at umich.edu> wrote:
>
>> I think Chris is exactly right that some significant number of government
>> actors place zero value on religious liberty.  Some others seem to place
>> affirmative value on saying no exceptions and making people who want
>> exceptions conform to the rules.
>>
>> Given either of these situations, if you want some value placed on
>> religious liberty, then overriding instructions, judicially enforceable, are
>> the only solution.
>>
>>
>> --
> Prof. Steven Jamar
> Howard University School of Law
> Associate Director, Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice
> (IIPSJ) Inc.
>

Douglas Laycock
Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
  734-647-9713
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/religionlaw/attachments/20090624/51e1002d/attachment.htm>