The role of religion in a free society, once a subject of benign and lofty discourse, has become a raging controversy in both the private and public arenas. While few in America challenge the multifarious benefits of religion to the individual believer and to society as a whole, there are sharply divergent views as to the extent to which notions of religious liberty immunize religious conduct from sanction when it interferes with public health, safety, and welfare.

In recent years, religious entities, often with the assistance of legislatures and courts, have advocated a presumptive constitutional right to avoid the law pursuant to the federal and state free exercise of religion guarantees, arguing that the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, and separation of powers render them immune from some legal requirements and precepts. Opponents of these initiatives have responded that this approach is at odds with American culture and legal tradition.

In this volume, Professor Marci Hamilton, one of the nation's leading legal scholars and one of the premier authorities on the Constitution's Religion Clauses, tackles these issues in depth and with gusto. Her dominant theme is that the temptation to treat religion as an unalloyed good is a belief one can embrace only at one's peril. Building upon her already prolific body of work, she proceeds from the baseline of the “no-harm principle” – that no person or entity can act in ways that harm others without consequence – which she demonstrates was widely shared by the Framers' generation.