What is Truth? Setting the Bounds of Justiciability in Religiously-Inflected Fact Disputes

Abstract

What does it mean for a religious belief to be true? This question has been the subject of a rich theological and philosophical debate stretching back thousands of years. But times change, and the answers appropriate for one epoch will cease to fit new ones. As long as people continue to care about their religions and their beliefs, the question must be continually posed and competing answers evaluated.In the United States, facially theological questions quickly take on constitutional dimensions, thanks to the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Government interaction with religion is inevitable, and ongoing public debate about the proper scope and limits of that interaction is a familiar and necessary component of our constitutional order. The meaning of “free exercise of religion” and its infringement is the continuously evolving product of litigation, legislation, and regulation pursued by state and private actors against a backdrop of assumed—and often contested—constitutional constraints and constitutional ideals.