Prof. Mary Ann Glendon and the Structure of Religious Freedom

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was recently blessed with the chance to participate in a conference celebrating the work of Prof. Mary Ann Glendon.  The event brought together a diverse range of fascinating scholars, and was sponsored by the Notre Dame Program on Church, State, and Society. 

The participants were asked to contribute, for discussion purposes, a very short reflection-paper on an aspect, theme, or dimension of Glendon's work.  My own effort is available here:  Download Glendon paper.  Here's the first paragraph:

In 1991, Mary Ann Glendon and Raul Yanes published in the Michigan Law
Review an article called “Structural Free Exercise.”[1]  This article – which I read as a law student in the early 1990s and to which I have returned many times – was and still is among the most insightful explorations and explanations of the freedom of religion that is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.  The problem Glendon and
Yanes identified -- namely, that an excessively expansive (and ahistorical)
understanding of the “establishment” of religion and an unduly narrow
understanding of religious “exercise” combine to compress and constrict the
“freedom of religion” – was and still is real and pressing.  And their response – that is, the claim that a “holistic, structural approach to the text is necessary [for] a workable,
coherent, church-state jurisprudence for our pluralistic, liberal, democratic
society”[2] – was and still is compelling.  I have, in my own work, attempted to develop and elaborate upon it.[3]  And, at least in some respects, it appears
that the Supreme Court of the United States might be coming around, too.[4]

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[1] Mary Ann Glendon &
Raul F. Yanes, Structural Free Exercise, 90
Mich. L. Rev. 477 (1991).

[2] Id. at 478.

[3][3]
See, e.g., Richard W. Garnett,
“Religious Liberty, Church Autonomy, and the Structure of Freedom,” in J.
Witte, Jr. & F. Alexander, eds., Christianity and Human Rights:  An Introduction 226 (2010).

[4] Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical
Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 565 U.S.
___ (2012).