Legal Commentary

We don't normally think of casebook supplements as especially artful projects; they're just late-summer catch-alls that, at least in my field of constitutional law, try to shoehorn in the major and not a few minor decisions, usually at undue length and without much commentary, until it's time to try to restitch everyting into a Frankenstein's monster of a new edition.  But every now and then one comes to your attention that lets you know what a really great supplement is capable of.

In that spirit, let me alert my law and religion colleagues to the 2008 supplement to Leslie Griffin's casebook on Law and Religion.  It really is a superb effort, which ties together vast numbers of new cases, news developments, and scholarship and has lots of thought-provoking things to say about the new materials along the way.  It was clearly a labor of love.  I hope I'm not saying that just because she had the marvelous good taste to mention my own article on religious tests and judicial nominations; I was already sold on the supplement well before I came across that reference. 

I don't, alas, use Prof. Griffin's casebook.  But I can say without a doubt that I will be consulting the supplement for lots of additional cases and questions to buttress the materials I do use, and I'm sure my class will be the better for it.  If you're teaching law and religion this year, both the casebook and the supplement are worth a good look.  One of the great pleasures of the law-blogger's pulpit is that I occasionally get to praise excellent work, and this is one of those happy occasions.