Kathleen Brady (Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University) and Steven J. Heyman (Chicago-Kent College of Law) have posted Introduction to Symposium – In Search of Common Ground: Religion and Secularism in a Liberal Democratic Society (100 Chicago-Kent Law Review 485 (2025)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In February 2025, the Chicago-Kent Law Review hosted the symposium In Search of Common Ground: Religion and Secularism in a Liberal Democratic Society. Ten leading law-and-religion scholars contributed papers addressing the symposium’s themes from a variety of perspectives. This introduction to the symposium highlights the issues and concerns that these contributions address, the many insights that they offer, and the connections between them.
Many of the symposium’s authors engage long-running debates regarding religious exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws, including bitter conflicts over exemptions from laws designed to protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination in public accommodations, health care, and social services. Many also explore the Supreme Court’s recent turn to history and tradition as sources of constitutional meaning, including its complexities and potential problems and promise. Several papers address the recent trend in the Court’s Establishment Clause cases to loosen restrictions on religious speech by the government. In both the Free Exercise and the Establishment Clause contexts, symposium authors analyze recent developments in the Court’s jurisprudence, make predictions about the future, offer their own proposals, and address the role of courts, legislatures, and administrators in protecting First Amendment values.
The papers in this symposium intersect in many ways, at once overlapping with and diverging from one another as they illuminate the conference’s themes. At times, they complement one another, and at other times, they challenge each other. All the contributors are committed to religious freedom and disestablishment. All are concerned with reducing America’s deepening polarization, and together they invite readers to appreciate the concerns of the many different religious believers and nonbelievers who are affected by how we interpret our constitutional commitments. It is not possible to find within these papers a common set of answers to our challenges. Yet the search for common ground is still fruitful. It broadens our understanding. It draws us together in common conversations. It illuminates our common concerns and common humanity. The survival of liberal democracy depends upon our ability to engage in these conversations, and it flourishes better the more that we listen to what others have to say.
Recommended!
To receive new posts from Legal Theory Blog by email, get a free subscription to Legal Theory Stack.
Lawrence Solum