We Hold Which Truths?

The Agnostic Age
Law, Religion, and the Constitution
Paul Horwitz
Oxford University Press, $65, 352 pp.

One major premise of liberalism is that the state will not weigh in on the truth of religious claims. This premise has led to a view of the legal system as a distant and dispassionate arbiter of disputes that involve religion, paying little attention to the content of religious beliefs as they relate to a particular law, focusing instead on the weight of the relevant state interests. The courts do not care, for example, why Native Americans were using peyote as part of a religious ceremony....

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