The Use of Religious Convictions by Legislators and Judges

This essay focuses on how religious convictions should affect the judgments of public officials, particularly legislators and judges.1 These officials must often decide how to vote on some issue: a legislator may determine what protection to give laboratory animals; a judge may as sess the constitutionality of statutory restrictions on abortion. The offi cial may have a religiously-grounded view that could affect his judgment; the legislator's faith may tell him that nonhuman animals warrant great consideration from human beings; the judge's church may teach that a fetus is morally as important as a developed human being. The main questions I ask in this essay are, first, whether legisla tion and judges should self-consciously rely on their religiously grounded judgments or should instead rely exclusively on other bases, and, second, whether they should explain their position publicly if they are relying on religious rationales. The issue is not whether religious understanding will have some influence on judgment. Typically, we do not know all the reasons be hind our decisions. What we believe most fundamentally will influence our judgment even if we try to discount it (although one conceivable form of influence is that we try so hard not to take religious convictions into account, we lean over backwards to decide in the contrary way). Still, it matters whether an official thinks religious convictions are a