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.