Collected Works on Religious Liberty, Vol. 1

This is a massive book—in a lot of ways too massive—that collects several of Douglas Laycock's major papers in law and religion, along with some other assorted writings, op-eds, book reviews, letters to Congress, etc: thirty-nine pieces in all. What's more, it is only volume one of a projected four-volume series. As its title suggests, this volume consists mostly of overviews and essays on the history of religious liberty. Other, later volumes will deal with constitutional and statutory exemptions for religion, and the difference between private and governmental speech about religion. For those familiar with the study of law and religion in America, there seems little doubt that many of Laycock's papers are worth collecting. Laycock is a giant in the field. Some of his essays are already classics, such as several of those in the first section of the book which defend the idea that laws should be “substantively” neutral toward religion, not merely neutral on their face. That idea has always been controversial, and it is useful to have Laycock's early essays expounding the idea alongside a later essay defending it against its critics. This volume also contains some hard to find shorter pieces included in the first section, which nicely and helpfully summarize Laycock's general views. Oddly, one of the first of his essays articulating substantive neutrality, “Equal Access and Moments of Silence: The Equal Status of Religious Speech by Private Speakers,” is not collected here; presumably it will be part of a later volume. Such are the hazards of a multivolume collection of papers.

Aesthetics · Neutrality · Political science · Section (typography) · Silence · Sociology · Statutory law · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious Freedom and Discrimination