Legal Commentary

The San Diego Law Review recently published a symposium issue on freedom of conscience.  The issue features contributions from Larry Alexander and Steven D. Smith, Kent Greenawalt, Adam Kolber, Brian Leiter, Andrew Koppelman, Chris Wonnell, Michael Perry, Dick Arneson, Nomi Stolzenberg, Michael White, Ronald Beiner, and Maimon Schwarzschild.

In my piece,  I analyze Kent Greenawalt's discussion of how we ought to weigh religious claims of conscience relative to nonreligious claims of conscience.  I also discuss ?alternative burdens? we can impose on those who make claims of conscience.  These alternative burdens increase the cost of making a claim of conscience and increase the likelihood that such claims will be made sincerely and be perceived as fair if granted. The alternative burden approach avoids many knotty questions about religion by making it generally irrelevant whether a claim of conscience is founded on religious or nonreligious reasoning.