Religion & Law

I've written a short essay for the Witherspoon Institute's "Public Discourse" website about the Christian Legal Society case.  Here's an excerpt:

So if the significance of Martinez cannot be explained away as the enforcement of a neutral open membership requirement or as a straightforward government funding case, what are the case?s lessons? Put simply, the case is a lesson in the legal norms surrounding dangerously amorphous concepts such as ?diversity? and ?discrimination,? and is an example of how those concepts can contribute to a robust, thick conception of the common good . . . or not. There are central questions that do not even appear to be on the radar screens of universities, courts, or other decision-makers that are shaping the course of these conversations: Is ?discrimination? always bad? If diversity is an important value in our society, where does associational diversity rank? Does our framework of liberty include the right to exclude? The factual history and legal analysis of Martinez leave us to wonder whether we even have the resources and inclinations as a society to engage these questions, much less to draw meaningful distinctions among types of discrimination.