The Constitutional Justification of Religion

Abstract

This article addresses religion from a legal perspective. It argues that religious matters should be settled outside the secular legal system; otherwise, the secular legal system would not be truly secular. However, religion demands special protection as a public good and social value, as it constitutes an extrinsic constitutional limit of the legal. For a secular legal system, protecting religion ultimately means protecting human beings' pursuit of the suprarational. Protecting suprarationality has three important legal consequences: (a) suprarational acts in the strictest sense should never be validated as legal acts; (b) democratic communities should not use suprarational arguments in legal discourse; and (c) the secular legal system cannot regulate suprarationality or the essentials of the religious community. The protection of religion demands both a dualistic structure that distinguishes the political community from the religious community and the treatment of religion as a right: the right to religion.