Vincent Phillip Munoz, "Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
What is religious liberty, anyway? What are its origins? What are religious exemptions? What would a jurisprudence of religious liberty based on the idea of natural rights look like? What is distinctive about such an approach and what are some of its pluses and minuses?\nThese are some of the questions addressed in\xa0Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses\xa0(U Chicago Press, 2022)\xa0by Vincent Phillip Mu\xf1oz.\nThe book explores the fraught legal and philosophical terrain of religious freedom. It is a meticulous study of the Founders\u2019 common concern for the protection for our inalienable right of religious free exercise and their surprisingly divergent views on how to navigate the relationships of privilege and control between church and state.\nMu\xf1oz examines the attitudes of the Founding Generation on these topics as reflected in the understudied area of constitution making between 1776 and 1791 in America at the state level. He argues that we have to go beyond the First Amendment\u2019s text to elaborate its meanings. We must, he contends, understand the intellectual and theological milieu of the time.\nMu\xf1oz provides the historical context of the creation of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment and the intellectual underpinnings of their original meanings. He explicates in a thorough but reader-friendly manner what we can and cannot determine about the original meaning of the First Amendment\u2019s Religion Clauses.\nThe book is a mixture of legal, intellectual, and political history in which we learn that the Bill of Rights was in many ways an afterthought, designed by the Federalists to counter opposition to the Constitution by Anti-Federalists. Indeed, Mu\xf1oz shows that many, if not most, of the individuals who drafted the First Amendment did not even think it was necessary. His detailed examination of the drafting records illuminates the Federalists\u2019 lack of enthusiasm for amendments and says, \u201cthe aim of many in the First Congress was to get amendments drafted, not to draft precise amendments.\u201d\nHe concludes the book with a discussion of the impact of natural rights constructions of those clauses. Mu\xf1oz contrasts fascinatingly, for example, his approach with those taken by recent Supreme Court justices (notably Samuel Alito) and argues that his novel church-state jurisprudence offers a way forward that could adjudicate First Amendment church-state issues in a legal, fair, coherent and, importantly, more democratic fashion.\nThis book is an outstanding guide to the many schools of thought on religious liberty in the United States and in his argument for an inalienable natural rights understanding as the Founders\u2019 most authoritative view, Mu\xf1oz convincingly shows that competing accounts\u2014(e.g., \u201cneutrality,\u201d \u201caccommodation,\u201d \u201cseparation,\u201d \u201cnon-endorsement,\u201d \u201cminimizing political division,\u201d and \u201ctradition\u201d) do not capture the deepest understanding of the Founders\u2019 thought.\nMu\xf1oz notes that his constructions correspond to no existing approach. They do not fall into what are usually considered either the \u201cconservative\u201d or \u201cliberal\u201d positions on church-state matters. The aim of the book is to spur more robust conversations about whether we are interpreting the Founders correctly and what evidence is most relevant to develop the First Amendment Religion Clauses consistently with their original design.\nLet\u2019s hear from Professor Mu\xf1oz himself.\nHope J. Leman is a grants researcher.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law