This past week I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Jim Oleske , a Professor of Law at Lewis & Clark. Professor Oleske is an expert on the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. A couple years ago, he wrote a prescient law view article that has made him something of a legal prophet (pun intended) in my mind. Below is our conversation about the free exercise doctrine generally and discussion on an important free exercise case heard by the Supreme Court this term. Enjoy! Tyler Broker: In 2019, you wrote a law review article titled Free Exercise (Dis)Honesty? that identifies past and current dishonesties when it comes to free exercise cases. Can you explain how the Supreme Court has been dishonest in its approach to free exercise cases? Jim Oleske: The central dishonesty is this: Over the past six decades, the court has disingenuously pretended to be faithfully applying precedent as it has repeatedly changed its position on the issue of whether there is a constitutional right to religious exemptions from neutral laws. The first flip came in 1963, when Justice Brennan led the Court to recognize a right to religious exemptions while wholly ignoring the teaching of prior […]
