Dear Religion Clause Readers:
Happy New Year 2022! I hope that you continue to find Religion Clause a valuable source of information on the intersection of law, religion and public policy. This past year, we saw a continuation of the trend to convert cultural and political disagreements with legislative or executive decisions into religious freedom or church-state claims that can be asserted before the courts. Faced with this deluge, the Supreme Court's increased use of its "shadow docket" to decide important free exercise cases without full briefing and argument has become the subject of controversy.
In reporting on these and other developments, I have attempted to retain Religion Clause's objectivity and its policy of linking to extensive primary source material. I hope that the blog continues to have a reputation for reliability at a time when the objectivity of social media is increasingly called into question.
Religion Clause is a niche blog whose readership includes lawyers at advocacy organizations, law school faculty, journalists, clergy, governmental agency personnel, students and others working professionally dealing with church-state relations and religious liberty concerns in the U.S. and around the world. I attempt to avoid excessive technical matters in my posts in order to make the blog accessible as well to non-lawyers with a general interest in the area.
2022 promises to be another year of interesting and important developments. I hope you will continue to follow them on Religion Clause. In addition to accessing the blog directly, links to Religion Clause postings are available on Twitter, Facebook and through e-mail alerts from services listed near the bottom of the blog's sidebar.
Thanks again to all of you who are loyal readers-- both those who have followed Religion Clause for years and those of you who have only recently discovered the blog. A special thanks to readers who have quickly sent me leads on recent developments, and to those who have alerted me to mistakes. I encourage you to recommend Religion Clause to colleagues, students and friends who might find it of interest.
Best wishes as we all face the challenges that 2022 brings to us. I hope that we are able to deal with these challenges by respecting divergent viewpoints and supporting the foundational institutions of American democracy.
Feel free to contact me by e-mail (religionclause@gmail.com) in response to this post or throughout the year with comments or suggestions. Best wishes for 2022.
Howard Friedman
