| Some interpretations: Congress cannot forbid the free exercise of religion Congress cannot stop all exercise of religion Congress may limit the exercise of religion Congress may limit the exercise of religion in any way it wants so long as it doesn't prohibit it Congress is forbidden from regulating religious beliefs Congress permitted to regulate any and all manifestations or physical actions constituting the putting into action of those beliefs (the Garman interpretation) Congress is prohibited from interfering at all with any and all manifestations or physical actions constituting the putting into action of those beliefs Gene, it says "exercise" -- not "belief." It says Congress cannot make any law which forbids the exercise of religion. It does not say Congress cannot make any law that forbids certain beliefs. Reynolds says that the first amendment free exercise clause includes both -- but that right to any belief is absolute, but that the right to exercise those beliefs is not of necessity absolute. But Reynolds does not therefore say that it is open season on putting beliefs into practice -- that Congress can do whatever it wants. To the contrary, Reynolds says that Congress has some power to regulate exercise. Use the dictionary to define exercise. Not surprisingly it includes stuff like activity, actions -- not merely beliefs. So, if Congress cannot completely prohibit the putting into action of religious beliefs, what can it do? Can it prohibit all public exercise? Mass? Sermons? Reading the Bible? None of those things totally prohibit the exercise of religion -- there would always be some scintilla of exercise left. That is not what it means and cannot be what it means. Jefferson and Madison were much more in the world than your interpretation would require them to be. I suspect that Article 18 of the ICCPR is pretty close to what they actually intended and had they thought of the Bill of Rights in affirmative terms rather than as strictly limits on the government, they would have ended up with something quite different. Since we now treat (properly) the amendments not merely as limits on Congress but also as embodying affirmative rights, the limitation approach, if it ever was functional, is not. Reynolds recognized that. Steve On Nov 21, 2005, at 4:34 PM, Gene Garman wrote: Professor Laycock, -- Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017 Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567 2900 Van Ness Street NW mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Washington, DC 20008 http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar/ "No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library." Samuel Johnson, 1751 |
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