Academic

Legal Theory Bookworm

By Lawrence Solum

The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends The Agnostic Age: Law, Religion, and the Constitution by Paul Horwitz. Here is a description:

The Agnostic Age: Law, Religion, and the Constitution is a book for lawyers, law professors, law students, lawmakers, and any citizen who cares about church-state conflict and about the relationship between religion and liberal democracy. It provides a way to understand and balance the conflicts that inevitably arise when neighbors struggle with neighbors, and when liberal democracy tries to reach common ground with religious beliefs and practices.

Paul Horwitz argues that the fundamental reason for the church-state conflict is our aversion to questions of religious truth. By trying to avoid the question of religious truth, law and religion has ultimately only reached a state of incoherence. He asserts that the answer to this dilemma is to take "the agnostic turn": to take an empathetic and imaginative approach to questions of religious truth, one that actually confronts rather than avoids these questions, but without reaching a final judgment about what that truth is.

This book offers a sensitive and sensible approach to questions of church-state conflict, justifying what the courts have done in some cases and demanding new results in others. It explains how the church-state conflict extends beyond law and religion itself, and goes to some of the central questions at the heart of the troubled relationship between religion and liberal democracy in a post-9/11 era.

And from the reviews:

"This is a powerful, learned, eloquent and wonderfully accessible account of the multi-layered and intractable tensions between religion's commitment to doctrinal truths and the liberal state's commitment to a non theistic--which does not necessarily mean anti-theistic--political order. Professor Horwitz takes the reader on a tour of the scholarship and the issues as he makes his way through the minefield of the establishment and free exercise clauses with ease, good humor, and an infectious spirit of optimism."
--Stanley Fish Davidson-Kahn Professor of Law and Humanities at Florida International University

"Taking truth (and therefore doubt) seriously-that's the central theme of this engaging book. In the midst of religious pluralism, a few scholars say our law of religious freedom must be based on what we believe to be true; more often, judges and scholars insist that our law must be detached from or 'neutral' toward religious truth. Professor Horwitz analyzes the problems with both positions. He proposes an alternative strategy which recognizes that we must act on what we believe to be true but that all our truths are profoundly contestable--and contested. This is a lively, insightful, and provocative book."
--Steven D. Smith, Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, University of San Diego

"The confident predictions of religion's decline and disappearance have proved badly misguided. It is true today, as it always has been, that religious faith, commitments, authority, and activism matter to people, to communities, and therefore to the law. In this thoughtful, engaging book, Prof. Horwitz proposes that our law and politics should appreciate religion's importance and distinctiveness and take its truth-claims seriously. As he explains, a secular government that is appropriately agnostic toward these claims nevertheless may and should cherish and protect religious freedom."
--Richard W. Garnett Professor of Law and Associate Dean Notre Dame Law School

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on February 05, 2011 (boomark / email).