Law, Religion, and Reason in a Constitutional Democracy: Goodman v. Rawls

Abstract

This article responds to Professor Lenn Goodman's book, Religious Pluralism and Values in the Public Sphere1 in three parts: Part I evaluates Goodman's argument that John Rawls excludes “comprehensive” religious and moral arguments from public discourse; Part II describes, in light of Professor Goodman's prediction that significant difficulties would attend efforts to enforce Rawlsian standards of public reason, concurring trends in U.S. constitutional law wherein American courts have applied “secular purpose” norms to contested legislation; Part III describes more recent trends in constitutional law that accommodate religious pluralism in laws and legislative processes. The authors argue that Goodman's interpretation of Rawls should be tempered by Rawls's later writings, which were relatively open to the substantive roles of religion in public reason and public discourse; and that recent trends in U.S. constitutional law may promote the types of pluralistic discourse that Goodman and the later Rawls advocate.