James Madison’s Politics of Religious Liberty

• In Event: The Federalist and American Constitutional Development

Abstract

This paper explains the relevance of Federalist 10 for current debates over the original meaning of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. Challenging the conventional originalist wisdom, Muñoz contend that Federalist 10’s argument does not work with religious exemptions and, therefore, a Madisonian construction of the Free Exercise Clause would uphold the Supreme Court’s much-disputed precedent, Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith.

Author

• Phillip Munoz, University of Notre Dame