Trial records translated from the Russian and the Ukrainian.

The free exercise of conscience is under threat in the United States. Already the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court is reversing the progress of religious liberty that had been steadily advancing. And this danger will only increase if more conservative judges are nominated to the court. This is the impassioned argument of Religion on Trial. Against Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Chief Justice Rehnquist, the authors argue that what the First Amendment protects is the freedom of individual conviction, not the rights of sectarian majorities to inflict their values on others. Beginning with an analysis of the origins of the Constitution and then following the history of significant church-state issues, Religion on Trial shows that the trajectory of American history has been toward greater freedoms for more Americans: freedom of religion moving gradually toward freedom of conscience regardless of religion. But in the last quarter-century, conservatives have gained political power and they are now attempting to limit the ability of the Court to protect the rights of individual conscience. Writing not just as scholars, but as advocates of church-state separation, Hammond, Machacek, and Mazur make the strong case that every American needs to pay attention to what is happening on the Surpeme Court or risk losing the liberties of conscience and religion that have been gained so far.

The Kentucky-born son of a Baptist preacher, with an early tendency toward racial prejudice, Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge (1894-1949) became one of the Court's leading liberal activists and an early supporter of racial equality, free speech, and church-state separation. Drawing on more than 160 interviews, John M. Ferren provides a valuable analysis of Rutledge's life and judicial decisionmaking and offers the most comprehensive explanation to date for the Supreme Court nominations of Rutledge, Felix Frankfurter, and William O. Douglas. Rutledge was known for his compassion and fairness. He opposed discrimination based on gender and poverty and pressed for expanded rights to counsel, due process, and federal review of state criminal convictions. During his brief tenure on the Court (he died following a stroke at age fifty-five), he contributed significantly to enhancing civil liberties and the rights of naturalized citizens and criminal defendants, became the Court's most coherent expositor of the commerce clause, and dissented powerfully from military commission convictions of Japanese generals after World War II. Through an examination of Rutledge's life, Ferren highlights the development of American common law and legal education, the growth of the legal profession and related institutions, and the evolution of the American court system, including the politics of judicial selection.

While many recent observers have accused American judges—especially Supreme Court justices—of being too driven by politics and ideology, others have argued that judges are justified in using their positions to advance personal views. Advocating a different approach—one that eschews ideology but still values personal perspective—H. Jefferson Powell makes a compelling case for the centrality of individual conscience in constitutional decision making. Powell argues that almost every controversial decision has more than one constitutionally defensible resolution. In such cases, he goes on to contend, the language and ideals of the Constitution require judges to decide in good faith, exercising what Powell calls the constitutional virtues: candor, intellectual honesty, humility about the limits of constitutional adjudication, and willingness to admit that they do not have all the answers. Constitutional Conscience concludes that the need for these qualities in judges—as well as lawyers and citizens—is implicit in our constitutional practices, and that without them judicial review would forfeit both its own integrity and the credibility of the courts themselves.