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In a message dated 6/10/2004 12:30:32 AM Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I'm not even sure that the benefits of a rigorous Free Exercise Clause and the burdens imposed by a rigorous Establishment Clause will even out if you aggregate the effects on all the religions. There are at least two
kinds of claims relevant to the discussion of the joint value of the religion
clauses: (1) Do all religious believers in a particular country benefit
equally from the rigorous enforcement of both clauses? and (2) Are religious
believers in a country where the First Amendment's religion clauses (or their
counterparts) are rigorously enforced better off than religious believers in
countries that do not have (or do not rigorously enforce) such clauses?
Although I don't know the
answer to either question, I suspect the answer to (1) is no while the
answer to (2) is yes. An affirmative answer to the second question, however, has
implications for the first question. If religious believers in
countries not having (or rigorously enforcing) the First
Amendment's religion clauses (or their counterparts) are worse off--from
the point of view of freely practicing their
religion--than religious believers in countries having such clauses, then
religious believers in the United States are generally better off
by the presence (and rigorous enforcement) of such clauses even if
"religious believers -- benefited by rigorous Free Exercise Clause protection
[are not] the same as the ones burdened by a rigorously enforced
Establishment Clause?" In other words, even if a particular group of
religious believers in the United States lose a particular battle regarding
their religion (or even a systemic or permanent battle), then arguably
they still might be better off than believers in countries not having the
religion clauses (or their counterparts).
In short, even if those
benefiting from the rigorous enforcement of the Free Exercise Clause are not the
same as those benefiting from the Establishment Clause, both sets of believers
might be better off than believers in countries not having either clause. This
argument rests or falls, of course, on whether the relevant comparisons can be
empirically verified, especially comparisons between religious believers in
different countries. One can't be certain, of course, but it doesn't seem
that such comparisons are significantly more difficult than other such
cross-national comparisons.
Bobby
Robert Justin Lipkin
Widener University School of Law
Delaware
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