MU Dean Gives History Lesson on Supreme Court

Brian T. Olszewski reported on this year's Pallium Lecture, “The Supreme Court and Religious Liberty,” delivered by Marquette University Law School Dean Joseph Kearney, at the Milwaukee Catholic Herald.

"'If the judiciary is no longer protecting practices because they stem from obligations arising from one’s creator, discerned from Scripture and supported by the teachings of church leaders and theologians, but instead because a claimant simply feels a higher power or inner calling (perhaps as much conscience as religion), then the judiciary is not operating with a coherent theory of religious freedom but rather just deferring to individuals’ idiosyncratic senses of self-realization, autonomy, etc.,' he said."

Not raised by Dean Kearney in the article, but one might wonder why a government policy based upon such non-religious views wouldn't be potentially prohibited as "the establishment of religion" if such non-religious views are protected as "the free exercise thereof".