Ethics

Religion and the Supreme Court

By Ed Brayton

A few months ago I was giving a speech and during the Q & A someone asked me if it concerns me that 5 of the 9 justices on the Supreme Court are Catholic. My answer was no, because being Catholic tells us little about how they're going to vote on any issue. William Brennan and Robert Jackson were both Catholic and they scarcely be more different than Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, both of whom are also Catholic. Justice Kennedy is Catholic, yet he cast the deciding vote in keeping abortion legal in the United States. He also authored the decision striking down anti-sodomy laws.

Moment magazine has an online symposium examining the question of whether the religious beliefs of the justices influence their legal opinions. It includes brief essays on the subject from a number of prominent scholars, including Eugene Volokh, Lawrence Tribe and Marci Hamilton. And the answers are pretty interesting.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on September 20, 2008 (boomark / email).