Free Exercise and the Rule of Law

This episode explores several early cases about the Free Exercise Clause and the question of whether the First Amendment requires religious exemptions to otherwise valid laws. After considering the issue of polygamy in the federal territories in the nineteenth century, we then look at the important case of Sherbert v. Verner (1963) and preview our discussion, in the next episode, about the Supreme Court's move away from the reasoning in Sherbert in the 1990s.

Om Podcasten

The 1787 Project is the podcast version of the lectures for Professor Justin Dyer's socially-distanced class on the U.S. Constitution at the University of Missouri. Running from August 2020 - May 2021, the course is about how the U.S. Constitution of 1787 frames the way we organize our life together as a political community. Published twice a week, the episodes explore who gets to decide big questions of public policy and why, analyze the design of our national political institutions and the contested boundaries between them, and look at the structure of constitutional rights.