Rights and Accommodations

Thanks to Susan for blogging about the conference she is attending. I'm sure it will be a very interesting and diverse set of presentations.

I did have one question about what Susan reported as one of EJ Dionne's "provocations." It's the one wherein Dionne distinguishes between "rights" and "accommodations" and "what we are trying to do in a pluralist society, i.e. find ways to accommodate conflicting interests," without "constitutionaliz[ing]" them.

I assume that the focus of the program Susan attends is on the sorts of questions that tend to fall into the "free exercise of religion" basket. And I quite agree that it would be nice not to have to constitutionalize so much, to have so many "rights." It would be far more socially attractive voluntarily to undertake a few more self-imposed burdens of civic tolerance. Unfortunately, that battle has been lost for quite some time with respect to the Establishment Clause, beginning circa 1947 and continuing right on through the 20th century, so much so that many commentators just think of the Court's current, heavily constitutionalized Establishment Clause as the perennial state of affairs. Yet it would be unfortunate in a discussion about "rights" and "accommodations" to lose sight of the other side of the religion clause coin. Perhaps free exercise is simply catching up.