Batty Bhatia on why Judges don't abolish death.

Gautam Bhatia has won Constitutional Studies' inaugural Ran Hirschl Prize for the Best Article in Constitutional Studies. Sadly, it is ignorant shit. 

Economic Inequality and the Separation of the Economic and the Political in Modern Constitutionalism Gautam Bhatia∗ Abstract 

This essay argues that the relationship between constitutionalism and economic inequality must be understood in the context of the relationship between constitutionalism and political economy.

Countries with very different constitutions may have the same political economy. Speaking generally, there is no relationship whatsoever between the two. During a total War, the political economy will change completely. The Constitution may not be suspended, but may work in a very different manner than previously.  

In particular, the concept of the separation of the economic and the political

There is no such separation. Politics deals with collective action problems which have an economic component if scarce resources are involved.  

—which undergirds the critique of political economy,

There are many different critiques. In none is the economic separated from the political.  

and is constitutive of capitalism

markets, even if illegal or unacknowledged by the law, constitute Capitalism provided investible resources are allocated through them.  

—is also one of the founding pillars of modern constitutionalism.

Which is utter shit.  

In constitutionalism, this is achieved and reflected through encoding the public private divide into constitutional structure and design, and entrenching it through judicial interpretation.

Nobody has ever done any such 'encoding'. Constitutional structure and design are historic. Their interpretation by the Bench may involve assumptions about how the world works. But what is entrenched by judicial interpretation is expectations re. what courts are likely to decide and therefore what the current 'rule-set' is. However, the justice system may be disintermediated for many purposes. 

Constitutionalism—like capitalism—presumptively divides up the world into the ‘political’ (structured by norms of democracy, equality, freedom, and so on) and the ‘economic’ (which is walled off from an application of these norms, and from the democratic contestation that defines the ‘political’).

No. The political realm pre-exists as the set of methods used to solve collective action problems. The economic realm pre-exists as the set of mechanisms which allocate scare resources. All political questions are also economic questions provided opportunity cost arises. Few economic questions are political because there are no externalities or other sources of market failure.  

While there have been attempts from within constitutionalism

cretinism 

to interrogate the separation of the economic and the political—in particular, through the expansion of equality and non-discrimination doctrine,

i.e. magical thinking 

the entrenchment of socioeconomic rights, and the evolution of constitutional horizontality—this essay argues that constitutional design and adjudication have ended up reaffirming the separation rather than meaningfully interrogating it.

Magical thinking ends up reaffirming that magic doesn't work. It completely fails to interrogate the cat regarding howcome it has nine lives.  

And while constittional courts have, on certain occasions, attempted to bring ‘class back into the constitution,

This can be done by saying that people of specific classes have extra immunities or lower liability. The Soviet Union held that 'class origin' should be reflected in sentencing. A proletarian should receive less punishment than a bourgeois cunt. Previously there were periods when the educated had 'benefit of clergy' or the aristocracy had considerable immunity from arrest.  

these judgments only reflect the gap between the courts’ identification of the problem, and the constraints and limits of the solutions that they are able to propose.

Courts aren't omnipotent. Speaking generally, there are strict limits on what they can do. There is little point pretending that shitty lawyers can get Judges to create an utterly shit Utopia. 

Batty Bhatia's blog has plenty of articles where he screams his tits off because some Judge has passed a sensible order instead of doing stupid shit.  

We may therefore conclude that, on occasion, constitutional adjudication may mitigate a degree of economic inequality in a certain context, but it is incapable of addressing the root of the problem that is responsible for economic inequality under contemporary capitalism.

No one has ever suggested otherwise. The Law is a service industry. It can create remedies under a vinculum juris, but unless it is incentive compatible to provide the remedy, it will be severely rationed or be merely cosmetic. 

'Contemporary Capitalism'- like every other system of allocating scarce resources- either has income inequality by reason of incentive compatibility or else faces relative, or even absolute, decline. 

How are we to understand the relationship between constitutions, constitutionalism, and economic inequality?

In the same way as we understand the relationship between cats, cabbages and economic inequality. A place without cats, cabbages, or a consititution may have little or great economic activity. But so may places with lots of cats and cabbages and constitutional lawyers.  

An answer to this question—which has become urgent in an age of heightened awareness of, and scholarship on, questions around inequality—

if by 'scholarship' you mean hysterical shite- sure.  

I suggest, lies not only in the domain of doctrinal constitutional law, but also—and primarily—in the domain of the critique of political economy.

Which this cunt can't do because Econ is a mathematical Social Science.  

In particular, a good starting point is to excavate the relationship between constitutions and the “social relations of production.” Let me begin with an insight owed to Karl Polanyi.

a cretin. His brother, the chemist, was smart and made some contributions to Econ.  

The Constitution of the United States, Polanyi observed in 1944, “isolated the economic sphere from the jurisdiction of the Constitution [and thus] put private property . . . under the highest conceivable protection, and created the only legally grounded market society in the world.”

This was clearly false. England already had a 'legally grounded market society'. Polanyi, an immigrant, thought that the Speenhamland system was the rule, not the exception. The truth was, application was patchy & most of the labour market was wholly free. Much depended on how much rate-payers were able or willing to pay. When the French threat was great, about 23 percent of the English rural population got some form of 'outdoor relief'. But in the North, it was about 10 percent. The economic motivation was to keep together the agricultural workforce. The problem was that those who benefitted from the Corn Law weren't taking a proportionate share of the burden of subsidising bread.  

While Polanyi’s observation was about the U.S.

it was wrong. 

, its reach—as this essay will argue—is not limited to one constitution in particular, but extends to the contemporary practice of constitutionalism, as it is popularly understood.

The whole thing is a crock of shit based on stupidity and ignorance.  

Elements of this popular understanding of constitutionalism include “legitimation through the invocation of popular sovereignty;

or Allah or Lord Ram or Rahul Gandhi's skid-marked chaddi.  

the reflection of political relations through representation (of the electorate through office-holders, and of the nation through fictive sovereignty),

India's Sovereignty is real enough  

the domestication of political conflict through institutionalization; and notional respect for individual rights given specificity—and limited applicability—through legal norms.”

The Law is a service industry. The remedies it provides are likely to be rationed. 

The extension of Polanyi’s insight from the U.S. Constitution to contemporary constitutionalism should not be particularly surprising.

We are not surprised that cretins quote a cretin.  

As the first modern written constitution,

In England that was Lambert's  The Instrument of Government (1653)

and as a model that has been exported around the world in the two hundred and thirty-six years of its existence, the structure and design of the U.S. Constitution have implications that extend far beyond its historical context and origins.

The US has dual sovereignty but it was watered down after the Civil War. Since the US has changed so much, interpretation of its Constitution too has changed. In recent years, POTUS & SCOTUS have more power relative to Congress. Maybe that will change. 

Using Polanyi’s insight as a baseline, this essay will consider economic inequality and modern constitutionalism through the lens of the critique of political economy.

Coase/Posner 'Law & Econ' is the right lens.  

In Section 1, I will illustrate how Polanyi’s observation about the ‘isolation of the economic sphere’ signals towards a phenomenon that has been described as the ‘separation of the economic and the political.

There was a separation of church and state. But as time went by the Constitution increased the economic power of elected politicians.  

This separation, it has been argued, is constitutive of modern capitalism

which is industrial and based on global financial markets. However there is Government oversight.  

—but ‘also,’ and by extension, of modern constitutionalism. In Section 2, I will argue that the separation of the economic and the political is evident in a number of features of modern constitutionalism—including those that, ostensibly, and—for our purposes—most importantly, attempt to transcend it.

Paranoia causes people to make this sort of argument.  

These include the removal, by design, of class’ as a ground of prohibited discrimination in constitutional equality clauses,‘

Things are designed so as to make them fit for purpose. It is reasonable to exclude 'class' so as to prevent a flood of law-suits. 

the tepid framing—and interpretation—of socioeconomic rights, the conscious absence of redistributive mandates, and the textual and judicial guardrails that have been placed around horizontal rights provisions.

Why is the Law not utterly mad? Is it because it would be disintermediated and thus lawyers would be unemployed if the Law did too much stupid shit.  

In Section 3, I turn to comparative constitutional doctrine. Drawing on cases from the constitutional courts of South Africa, Canada, Kenya, and Colombia,

why not Estonia? Class is a protected category but the effect is limited. I believe property and social status is covered in the private sector but only for conciliation procedures handled by the Chancellor of Justice. 

I show how courts, on occasion, attempt to bring ‘class back into the constitution’ and in doing so, illustrate both the potential, but also the limits, of constitutional interpretation as a corrective to economic inequality.

The legislature and executive have superior powers in this respect. It is foolish to try to make the Bench serve a purpose for which it is ill equiped.  

I conclude with the following question: if constitutional interpretation and adjudication leave intact the basic structure of the economy within which constitutions are embedded,

just as Doctors and plumbers do 

is it ever possible to ‘solve’ the problem of economic inequality within the framework of modern constitutionalism? 

Sure. Let the Legislature and the Executive get on with it. The Bench only comes into the picture if an act is ultra vires. 

The Separation of the Economic and the Political Polanyi’s insight about the ‘isolation of the economic sphere’ from the U.S. Constitution has substantive explanatory purchase. Historical research has shown that at least one of the motivating factors for the framing of the U.S. Constitution—as reflected in its structure and design—was to protect property owners from ‘over-zealous’ colonial state legislatures that were enacting farreaching redistributive legislation.

Since 'dual sovereignty' was weighted in favour of the States there was nothing the Federal Government could do about this. Since, 'redistributive' policies (favouring debtors) were inflationary and harmed commerce,  the Constitutional Convention of 1787 curbed state powers and prohibited states from emitting their own paper money, making anything other than gold or silver coin a tender in payment of debts, or passing laws impairing the obligation of contracts. This followed Shay's rebellion. The fear was that the new country would degenerate into anarchy. Since Americans could move West, the political impetus for redistribution was blunted. However, at a later point there was a 'homestead exception' protecting the assets and livelihoods of poorer debtors. 

This motivation was to be given judicial imprimatur a century later in The Civil Rights Cases, where—albeit in a slightly different context—the U.S. Supreme Court noted that it was not the task of the Constitution to “adjust the social rights” of individuals vis-à-vis each other.” While parts of The Civil Rights Cases have since been overruled, and the power of the U.S. Congress to intervene in the “private sphere” and enact (limited) antidiscrimination legislation affirmed, the force of Polanyi’s observation has not been blunted.

Why isn't the US a Marxist dictatorship? The answer is that Americans saw that income inequality drove rapid economic growth which, in turn, meant higher absolute material standards of living. There is a separate 'Georgeist' reason for raising taxes on 'economic rent' because there is a much smaller disincentive effect. The trouble is, nobody can be sure that only rent is being confiscated. Let us see it the proposed billionaire tax takes off.  

Is Polanyi’s observation, however, limited to a historically contingent event—the framing of  the U.S. Constitution, and its subsequent interpretation?

It was simply false. There were indentured servants in the US. The British Passenger Vessels Act 1803 made ship travel more expensive, and an 1833 US federal law abolished debtor prisons, which meant masters could no longer easily prosecute or jail runaway servants. In England laws were passed in 1813-1814 which ended something similar with respect to  Servants in Husbandry & Compulsory Apprenticeships. However, it was only in 1875, some ten years after the US, that the UK fully outlawed any type of civil compulsory servitude. 

I would suggest not, as it closely tracks an idea that scholars engaged in the critique of political economy have been articulating for some time: that is, the ‘separation of the economic and the political’ in capitalism.

Which is Commie propaganda. Did you know that Elon Musk is actually a starving slave? This is because he is the employee of a private company.  

The separation of the economic and the political refers to the argument that under capitalism, “the social functions of production and distribution, surplus extraction and appropriation, and the allocation of social labour are . . . privatized and they are achieved by non-authoritative, nonpolitical means” (as distinguished, for example, from feudalism, where accumulation, in the first instance, depends directly upon violence).

True freedom can only be found in the Gulag- right?  

State coercion exists, of course—for instance, under the euphemism ‘the enforcement of contracts’ (or even, more basically, the enforcement of trespass laws in defense of the absolute right to private property).

Why are people not allowed to sodomize batty Bhatia? Is the law homophobic as well as being Capitalist?  

But, as the argument goes, it is only required when there is a breakdown in the relationship between juridically free and equal contracting individuals.

i.e. guys like me. Nobody bothered to chase me for money I owed because I would threaten a counter-suit of a frivlous kind and thus it was obviously a waste of time and money.  The truth is, getting a bloke declared bankrupt may benefit him more than it does the creditor. 

And existing separate from this ‘private sphere’ of economic freedom is the sphere of the political, and the state, constituted by principles of public law and right.

Constituted by people who, for whatever reason, are trusted to solve collective action problems.  They may wholly ignore both law and morality. 

The critique of the separation of the economic and the political under capitalism stems from Karl Marx’s insight that the sphere of economic production is constituted by a set of ‘social relations.’

It clearly isn't in our globalised, high-tech, world. Market relations may have no social aspect whatsoever.  

The formal and juridical freedom of wage-seeking workers, to enter into formally and juridically equal contracts with the owners of capital,

the borrowers of capital would be more accurate. Many enterprises are highly leveraged.  

obscures the actual differences in power and the relations of domination between them, differences that are entrenched within legal and political forms (such as property ownership).

Bosses tell workers what to do. That's tyranny!  

 In the domain of constitutionalism, and drawing on prior scholarship, I have recently argued that modern constitutionalism is structured by the public-private divide (something that I have referred to as ‘default verticality’),

A private organisation may be held to be a public entity if it discharges a function undertaken by the Government.  

and that this structure is founded upon three assumptions: that of unitary sovereignty,

America has dual sovereignty 

abstract freedom,

if it is justiciable, it is concrete.  

and equal individual responsibility

there is no such doctrine. Speaking generally, a higher duty of care (culpa levis in abstracto) is expected of the bonus paterfamilias.  

(the last of these draws from the insight, noted above, of ‘formally’ free and equal individuals who shape their relationship with each other through the mechanism of the contract).

An unfair or oppressive contract may be struck down as unconscionable.  

Batty Bhatia cites various Leftist Law Professors who remain puzzled as to why Courts haven't created a Communist dictatorship. 

Why have I undertaken this journey through the evolution of constitutional non-discrimination provisions, and their accompanying theories? I have done so to illustrate a persistent absence: the absence of class.

It is there in Estonia. The Soviet Union started off with making class a key issue in the 1919 Guiding Principles of Criminal Law but this was dialled down, more particularly in the post-Stalin phase of Communism. 

If Class is absent, chances are including it would be onerous or otherwise mischievous. If you multiply legal grounds for suits between private parties- e.g. my suing you for not inviting me to your birthday party just because I iz a poor bleck person whereas you are slightly less poor and not quite as dark- then a nuisance is created. There is likely to be a backlash. 

Governments and Big companies may keep track of court decisions in discrimination cases and this may lead to better behaviour. Equally, it may lead to their spending more on lawyers and less on investment with the result that everybody becomes worse off. 

  Conclusion The starting point of this essay is the question of how modern constitutionalism can deal with the problem of economic inequality.

It can support the Executive and the Legislature in doing sensible things to raise up the poor. This militates for an expanded doctrine of political question.  

The question, however, has a deeper dimension: in other words, the question of economic inequality cannot be answered without examining modern constitutionalism from the lens of the critique of political economy.

i.e. obsolete Marxist shite.  

From the mid-twentieth century onwards, we have seen attempts from within constitutionalism to interrogate and challenge the separation of the economic and the political.

We have seen a lot of Nationalization and Government interference in the economy through Exchange Control, Credit Rationing, Industrial policy, Manpower policy, Regional policy etc. Sadly, this led to stagflation & thus a reaction towards freer markets.  

I consider three of the most prominent such attempts: the expanding scope of doctrines of non-discrimination and equality,

which degenerated into Woke shite or Human Rights shite  

the jurisprudence of socioeconomic rights, and the evolution of horizontality. I argue that while each of these developments may carry the potential of interrogating the separation, they have not done so.

Because Marxism & Critical Legal Studies & other such paranoid shite is shite.  

Doctrines of non-discrimination—including their intersectional variants—have and continue to exclude class as a ground of analysis.

Also ugliness.  

We may therefore conclude that,

the Law is a service industry. If it does stupid shit, smart people disntermediate it. In India this means you contract in another jurisdiction.  

on occasion, constitutional adjudication may mitigate a degree of economic inequality in a certain context, but it is incapable of addressing the root of the problem that is responsible for economic inequality under contemporary capitalism.

Also, the Bench has signally failed to abolish death. Why? Is it because the Judges are being bribed by the Undertakers? I suppose so. Batty Bhatia should write an article about this glaring injustice.  

Verdict on LK Advani

 LK Advani turns 99 today. He may have been innocent of the destruction of the Babri Masjid (he was acquited in 2020) but he is guilty of laying the foundations for the BJP's coming to control 72 percent of India.

This happened in 1989 when he was the prime mover in the Palampur Resolution committing the party to building the Ram Temple come what may. Vajpayee wanted to stick to 'Gandhian Socialism' & didn't want to associate with the lumpen element in the VHP (which he dismissed as a 'monkey army). Advani's 1990 Somnath to Ayodhya Rath Yatra, which was seen as a way to counter VP Singh's desire to extend reservations on the basis of the Mandal report, re-energised the party. Advani had explicitly warned V.P. Singh that if his yatra was disrupted, the BJP would pull the plug on the coalition. On October 23, 1990, Advani was arrested in Samastipur, Bihar, on the orders of Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav. It was this specific arrest that directly prompted the collapse of the government because the BJP withdrew 'outside support'. 

Modi began his rise as part of Advani's rath yatra and greatly benefitted from his support. However, as a small town boy himself, Modi saw the importance of 'last mile delivery' to farmers and rural folk. Advani had campioned connecting villages to the towns through roads. This was not enough. You had to go into the villages and ensure every family became a 'labharthi' (beneficiary). Thus, though Modi praises Advani's ideological clarity, his own welfarist politics differs sharply from it. 

It must be said, Modi comes across a devout Hindu who practices Yoga. Advani, it was reported, had little time for religion. His estranged ex-daughter-in-law gained a lot of publicity for the claim that the Advanis were actually Sikh, not Hindu and that he faked a Bhardwaj Brahmin gotra for his 1990 rath yatra. Even more damaging was that the claim that his family had melted down gifted silver Hindu idols to make household cutlery. Interestingly, she also claimed that a Sikh diplomat, Hardeep Puri, then deputy High Commissioner in London, had wrongfully confined and pressured her at his London office regarding her marital dispute with Jayant Advani. Most dismissed such claims. Sindhi Hindus show high reverence for Guru Nanak but so do millions of other Hindus in different parts of India.

The truth about Advani was that he came of age, intellectually, at a time when secularism was gaining ground. As a refugee, he dreamed of an 'Akhand Bharat' where the whole sub-continent would become a federation on the basis of religious toleration. 

Advani's grandfather was a Sanskrit scholar & the principal of a Government High School. His father was a successful businessman but Advani was not interested in making money.  After a good education at an Irish Christian Brothers' school, he began teaching in Karachi at the young age of 17 in 1942. But for the tragedy of Partition, I suppose he would have become a Professor or research scholar. Instead, Advani chose the austere life of a celibate RSS pracharak, first in Rajasthan & then Delhi, and only began earning independently, as a journalist in his thirties. Prior to that, he had stayed in Atal's Government accomodation- which explains why they were so close.

 Advani got married when he was 38 years old. His wife, a fellow refugee, took a job at the Post Office to support her family after her father passed away. She was about 5 years junior in age to her husband. She was a great support to him till she passed away a decade ago. His daughter took over that role. 

Two years later, Advani, as the Jan Sangh's chief organised in Delhi, got a hat trick- viz. a majority of parliamentary, MDC & MC seats. Thus, he became the Chairman of the DMC. His success in this role paved the way for his entry into the Rajya Sabha in 1970. Like Atal, he was a brilliant parliamentarian more particularly when he was Leader of the Opposition. He had taken a law degree but hadn't practiced. It was his journalistic work and his wide reading which allowed him to speak in an incisive manner. Modi praises his ideological clarity. Atal was more emotional and trusted to flights of rhetoric rather than reason. What Modi mostt admires is Advani's obstinacy on the Ram Temple question. It was tangible and concrete. The 'rath yatra' involving brick donation created a sense of empowerment. The voters were tired of windy talk. Modi helped Advani secure Gandhinagar from 1991 onward (except 1996 when he did not contest because of the Jain Hawala scandal) and observed his style of operation closely. Later, in 2014, when Advani wanted to shift to Bhopal, Modi persuaded him not to. It was important that the party be seen to be united. But to keep winning elections, the party must focus on 'last mile delivery'. Some may say that Modi repeated Advani's 2004 mistake of hubris, or over confidence, twenty years later. He seems to have learned from his mistake. 

Pramod Mahajan was in charge of the disasterous 2004 election campaign. Vajpayee felt he was a good communicator & the belief, at that time, was that support for the party was growing because of the strong economy. The problem was that the rural areas had not benefited much. 'India Shining' backfired because people could see poor village women getting trampled in a stampede to get a free sari worth Rs. 40. 

It must be said, Modi & the post-Godhra riots had alienated Muslims & parties worried about the Muslim vote- e.g. DMK in Tamil Nadu which had previously been a reliable ally. DMK got 40 seats. BJP lost 44. Congress gained 31 seats- 24 of them in Andhra Pradesh, at the expense of Chandrababu Naidu who had foucussed on high tech industry in the cities while neglecting the rural hinterland. 

Without Vajpayee, the BJP was at a disadvantage more paricularly becomes Rahul had become an MP and could take over from Manmohan at any time. Advani was even older than Manmohan and his messaging was poor. Mahajan was killed by his brother in 2007 and the party was in disarray. It lost a further 22 seats in 2009. Fairly, or unfairly, Advani got a lot of the blame. 

Could Advani have won in 2014? No. He was 87 years old. Manmohan, at 81, was decrepit enough. Modi, however, was 64 and had run Gujarat very successfully for 13 years. Still, if Rahul had shouldered Manmohan aside and taken the top job, he probably would have won because he was 44 years old. 

Indeed, it was Rahul's return to India in 2002 and his standing for parliament in 2004, which doomed the BJP coalition. Advani, it must be said, was unstinting in his praise for Manmohan's performance as Finance Minister. But this wasn't a smart move when the younger man was the Congress PM and he himself was the leader of the opposition. Even more foolish was his assertion, in 2005, that Jinnah was 'secular'. Why didn't the party replace this 82 year old for the 2009 election? The truth is, there was a leadership vacuum. The RSS had lost faith in Advani & got him to resign as President of the Party in December of 2005. But they had no one to replace him with. The Delhi 4 - Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj,Venkakah Naidu & Rajnath Singh (the party president from 2005 to 2009) - were factionalising and intriguing against each other. After the 2009 election debacle, the RSS replaced Advani with Suhsma Swaraj as Leader of the Opposition. Gadkari was made President but did not have the gravitas or auctoritas to function effectively. Thankfully, Modi- thanks to the allegation that he liked eating Muslim babies- was becoming the 'Emperor of Hindu Hearts'. But, he himself knew, only last mile delivery matters. This was his message in 2014 and he swept the polls. His first big speech was about toilets. He promised to end open defecation. Every home would have an indoor toilet. The age of ideology was over. Politics was now about solving collective action problems in a manner that directly benefitted the poorest. Advani, it seems, was unimpressed. In 2019, when he finally retired from Parliament at the age of 91, he scolded Modi & Shah, in all but name, for calling people anti-national even if they were anti-national and wanted to break up the country. Hilariously, a Congress politician tweeted that Rahul was the true inheritor of Advani's legacy! The next year, Advani was acquited in the Babri case. Four years later, he was invited to the inauguration of the Ram Temple. Because of the extreme cold weather and his advanced age, he was not able to attend. Still, one might say of it, as was said of Sir Christopher Wren- Si monumentum requiris, circumspice- if seek his monument look around you. Not a bad verdict on a man whose political career was overshadowed first by Vajpayee and then by Modi. 

Batty Bhatia on Kerala Contempt

The Kerala Congress, in a post on X, insulted the CJI by suggesting he lacked the competence and integrity required of people in the domain of the law. Worse yet it said it would find a 'replacement' for him.

This was the post.

"Dear Surya Kant, If law and order is not your domain, resign now. We will find your replacement who can handle it.

 Since no political party can remove or replace a Supreme Court Judge. The Bench is demanding to know why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against the party. The Keral Congress says the person responsible has been sacked. They do not condone the post in any way.

Batty Bhatia takes issue with what has happened.

Putting Contempt into a Torture Rack: the Supreme Court’s Notice to Kerala Congress 

November 7, 2026 Gautam BhatiaLeave a comment

The Supreme Court is not known to be friendly to criticism.

Yet, it hears review petitions every day which criticise its previous findings.  

Its expansive interpretation of the Contempt of Courts Act and its deployment of the colonial concept of “scandalising the court”

It is a British concept. Britain is not a colony. Nor is India. By the doctrine of autochthony adopted by framers of the Constitution, all extant laws are considered indigenous. Incidentally, England & Wales got rid of 'scandalising' a judge, but the offence remains in Scotland.  

has placed a vast domain of speech under the shadow of illegality.

It was always under that shadow. We don't want judges to be insulted and intimidated because we feel this might undermine the rule of law. 

However, even by these existing standards, the Court’s decision to issue notice to all the office-bearers of the Kerala State Congress Unit for a tweet is a disquieting encroachment into the domain of core, protected speech under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.

It is of no consequence. Congress has apologised. They may make some further declaration to the same effect.  

If a demand to sack a judge goes beyond criticizing a judgment and instead targets the judge's personal integrity, it falls under Criminal Contempt (specifically, "scandalizing the court" under Section 2(c) of the Act). The most recent, relevant case, is In Re: Justice C.S. Karnan (2017). Before that, there was C.K. Daphtary v. O.P. Gupta (1971) 

Hitherto, even under its expanded understanding, the Court had continued to trace the basis of the contempt offence to the observation of the Constitution Bench in Aswini Kumar Ghose vs Arabinda Bose,

A case from 1952 about the 'dual system' which existed at that time. On 30 October 1952, The Times of India published a leading editorial titled "A disturbing decision." The article strongly criticized the Supreme Court's decision to dismantle the dual system, asserting that the Judges had "strained the law" and allowed themselves to be influenced by "politics and policies."

The Supreme Court issued a contempt notice against the newspaper’s Editor, Printer, and Publisher, ruling that attributing improper political motives to judges lowered the dignity of the court and undermined public confidence in the justice system. The respondents acknowledged they had exceeded legitimate bounds of criticism and tendered an unreserved, unconditional apology. Accepting their sincere regret, the Court dropped the proceedings without imposing punishments.

namely spreading the impression that “Judges in the highest Court in the land act on extraneous considerations in deciding cases.”

Which is a milder offence than saying that your party will remove and replace the judge even though it lacks the numbers in parliament to vote for impeachment. Thus, the meaning is that some illegal method will be used to punish and replace the CJI>  

In D.C. Saxena,

a nutter demanded that a Judge who decided against him be sacked and stripped of his citizenship! He was sent to jail.  

the Court likewise differentiated between criticising judgments and “attributing motives” to judges. The 2006 amendment to the Contempt of Courts Act subsequently clarified that the contemptuous statement had to be one that “substantially interferes, or tends substantially to interfere with the due course of justice.”

Which is the case if a political party is trying to force the CJI to resign so they can replace him with someone more to their taste.  

Even in the notorious Prashant Bhushan case – which this blog previously declined to analyse – appropriately abstract observations were made about “shak[ing] the public confidence in the fairness and impartiality of the administration of justice.”

The Court chickened out. It should have sent Bhushan to jail.  

On the one hand, it may be argued that this kind of doctrine is so vague – and so utterly subjective – that virtually any kind of criticism can be taken to be “shaking public confidence in the fairness and impartiality” of the courts, because that determination is purely a matter of opinion.

 The Bench doesn't think it is too vague. It is they who have the authority to make it less so. 

However, even if we take it to be so, the allegedly offending statement in the present case appears to fall well outside its scope.

Appears to whom? Not the Bench and not the Kerala Congress. What is batty Bhatia's locus standi?  

In response to the Chief Justice of India observing that he was not responsible for maintaining law and order,

That is the responsibility of the Executive.  

the Kerala Congress handle tweeted – firmly tongue in cheek, as should be obvious to just about anyone with a functioning antenna for humour – that “Dear Surya Kant, If law and order is not your domain,

it is because actions of the Executive are subject to judicial review. This isn't humour. This is batty Bhatia level stupidity and ignorance.  

resign now. We will find your replacement who can handle it.”

Does the law permit the Kerala Congress to replace judges? No. I suppose one could say the remark falls below the threshold for sedition because it is so silly, but not below the threshold for contempt. 

This is not attribution of motive, it is not questioning of integrity or fairness, and it stretches credulity to the breaking point to suggest that it “shakes the public confidence in the … impartiality of the administration of justice.” 

It isn't a particularly serious matter. Like the 1952 case re. the Times of India, a fulsome apology will suffice.  

and while everyone with the aforementioned functional antennae can see it for what it is – a rather soft jibe at a judge – there is, however, something even more important at stake here: whether tongue in cheek or not, calling for a public official to step down is at the very core of the democratic free speech guarantee; indeed, it is the very mildest form of critique of their functioning that can possibly be offered.

No. It may be sedition or involve contempt of court if a judge is the target. There is a procedure for removing politicians or judges from office. Assassination or Revolution may do so but the would-be assassin or the revolutionary may be arrested and imprisoned before he can acachieve anything

There can be no conceivable reason why judges should be immune from this form of critique,

The reason is that judges who fear for their lives, will not try to restrain politicians. Kerala Congress is under Rahul Gandhi. Everybody knows what his gradmother got up to in the mid-Seventies.  

or why they should seek to punish it by using contempt powers.

Judges gain by punishing those who malign them. Batty Bhatia may be very happy when peole threaten to kill and replace him, but that is because he is as stupid as shit.  

Disturbingly, the Kerala Congress appears to have already admitted guilt by firing their social media person and apologising for the tweet;

Batty Bhatia is deeply disturbed. You'd have to be utterly mad to hire him as a lawyer.  

that the Supreme Court has nonetheless chosen to issue notice with the observation that they will verify whether the apology comes from the “pen or the heart” (how will anyone ever determine that?)

The Judges will. If I say 'I don't believe you', it is implied that I can change my disbelief into belief under some set of circumstances.  

and deal with this with an “iron hand” is even more disturbing, because it suggests that we are at the edge of a slippery slope

Only in the sense that we always have been. Why have judges? Suppose a judge sentences you to prison? Won't you feel annoyed? Why not get rid of judges and police and armies and governments? Also let us get rid of the Sun because it may get too hot and then we will feel uncomfortable.   

where even the boundary between (impermissible) “attribution of motive” and (permissible) critique of a judge is blurred to the point of nothingness.

No. I can say Judge X's ratio is wrong because it ignored a binding staturtory provision. In legal jargon, the ruling is per incuriam. I should not say Judge X's ratio is wrong because he was bribed or because hates people of my religion. 

How are you allowed to criticise the Court, then?

You are welcome to say the Court is elitist or deracinated or inefficient. If you consider a particular judge incompetent or corrupt, produce evidence. Under the 2006 Contempt Amendment Act, Truth is a defence.  

The answer, probably, is that you’ll only find out when you get that contempt notice.

When in doubt, ask a lawyer. Just make sure it isn't batty Bhatia.  

Verdict on Sonia Gandhi

 Sonia moved to India and married Rajiv before the split in the Congress party. At that time, Indira was getting the blame for devaluation and was dismissed as a 'gungi ghudiya' (dumb doll). Her Cabinet was dominated by Morarji Desai, the Finance Minister, who deeply resented having been passed over for the Prime Ministership. The wily Kamaraj (considered the 'King-Maker') had lost his seat, in 1967, because of his obstinate refusal to abandon the cause of Hindi as the national language. He was busy intruiging against Indira- who had good relations with the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu. When she broke with the 'Syndicate', it was the Left parties & the Dravidians who enabled her to rule. But that was in the future. In January 1968, few expected Indira to remain in power. The 1967 election had seen a big swing against Congress. Since Rajiv had qualified as a commercial pilot and there was a world-wide shortage of pilots, he could always provide for his family flying international routes. The family could relocate to any country where they felt comfortable. However, the fact that Indira took to her daughter-in-la, more particularly after she suffered a miscarriage, meant that she could feel comfortable as a member of an Indian joint-family. 

After Indira's great election victory in 1971 and her even more splendid defeat of Pakistan, Indira could consider promoting her son as her successor. Fortunately, Rajiv & Sonia weren't interested in politics. Thus the path was clear for Sanjay and his young wife Maneka. It appears Sonia never got on well with Maneka & thus Maneka and her son Varun are not permited to return to their ancestral party. 

Sonia has published an autobiography 'Belonging' which maintains a diplomatic silence about the rather bizarre goings on in the Prime Minister's household after Sanjay's death. It appears Indira had come to believe that  Maneka, and her mother, were using black magic against her! Interestingly, Indira did the Lakshachandi Path ritual from 1979 to 1983. The eldest daughter-in-law usually participates in this. 

The website 'MyBookAdvisor' summarises her book thus-

Belonging: A Journey of Love Summary

The Greek word 'oikeiosis' (appropriation or belonging) underlines much Catholic dogma.  In the early Church, oikeiosis became a technical term to describe how Jesus Christ, the Divine Son, appropriated or took unto Himself human nature. It came to mean the internal life of the Trinity. It was also seen as the antidote to the estrangement or exile that is sin. Through Christ, humans undergo oikeiosis with God—meaning we are "re-domesticated" or brought back into close communion and familial adoption within the divine household.

Sonia says 'Catholic values are at the back of her mind', but she was married under Hindu rites and ensured her daughter's marriage, too, was Hindu. In this way, she safeguarded her mother-in-law's legacy. Indira had fought a court case to prove her sons were Hindu. 

Belonging: A Journey of Love is organized around Sonia Gandhi’s recurring framework of belonging-as-practice: love isn’t treated as a feeling that arrives, but as something you build through attention, loyalty, and moral choice.

She and Rahul were separated while he was in India training to be a pilot. Their love withstood this separation. Sonia could have chosen to take the kids and leave India with her husband after Indira lost power and there was talk of her being sent to jail. Again, after her husband was killed, she could have left India with her daughter. Clearly, her sense of oikeosis involved staying in India to protect her mother-in-law's legacy. Interestingly, Rahul says he could have become PM in 1995, when he turned 25. At the time there was talk of Sonia's estrangement with the PM- Narasimha Rao. 

Gandhi returns again and again to the idea that love has a political edge—not in the slogan sense, but in how it shapes who gets protected, who gets heard, and what you’re willing to sacrifice when relationships and institutions collide.

For Sonia, the family comes first. The Congress party is its ancetral property. Sadly, her son is a moon-calf. Maybe, he will step aside and let his sister take over.  

One concrete thread she keeps threading through the book is the way personal devotion and public responsibility have to be held together, not traded off.

Devotion to the family is all that matters. You can't put the public interest first. This sounds like the code of the Mafia.  As Michael Corleone says- "Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the Family again'. Later, after their mother dies, he has Fredo killed. 

Even without a “how-to” plot, the structure keeps circling back to the same claim: belonging is earned through consistency, especially when life gets messy and power makes people act like strangers.

Sonia was ruthless in dumping those who had outlived their usefulness. Often, it turned out they weren't really loyal at all. What was her view of Amitabh Bacchan (from whose family home she was married)? It is said that he had fallen out with Rajiv and then, later on, had refused to help Sonia with her son's college fees. The Bacchans may well have felt that Rajiv hadn't lifted a finger to protect them from VP Singh's investigation of their assets. Loyalty to the Dynasty was a one way street as Arjun Singh was to learn. 

A specific example she leans on is the contrast between private affection and public duty—how Gandhi frames family love as a training ground for solidarity.

But not with her sister-in-law.  

She also uses the book’s repeated return to memory and loss to show that belonging isn’t the absence of grief; it’s what you do after grief, when you still choose people over comfort.

she could have left Delhi- more particularly because she suffers from asthma.  

There’s also a clear emphasis on dignity: Gandhi treats dignity as the minimum standard of love, and she ties that to the way societies can either widen or narrow the circle of care.

She is Italian. There was a lot of poverty in much of Italy at one time. The country made fantastic progress over the course of the Fifties and Sixties.  

Honest limitation: this is not a detailed, chronological memoir, and it doesn’t offer a clear roadmap for applying her ideas to specific modern relationship problems. If you want concrete scenes, named events, and step-by-step guidance, Gandhi’s lyrical, values-driven approach may feel frustratingly broad and occasionally abstract.

She is wary of libel suits. Her book may be anodyne but it should sell well in Congress ruled states. It appears that she thought the tide had turned against Modi after he lost his majority in 2024. She believed that the press would start hammering away at him. But Modi has retained his popularity. His party has made significant gains- most particularly in West Bengal where Rahul says his father's protege, Mamta, waas killing Congress workers. Sonia has been writing quite a few articles, some quite sensible, attacking Modi. The problem is her son who can't speak coherently. Screaming your tits off, at the age of 56, undermines confidence in your ability to run the country. 

Sonia appears to think that Congress is finished in the Hindi belt. Thus she says she wept when she saw the Babri Masjid torn down. Perhaps, she- quite understandably- doesn't like Hinduism. Her mother-in-law did stupid shit under the belief that some Hindu mumbo-jumbo would save her hide. She should have got rid of her Sikh body-guards. Even if she herself wanted to die, she had endangered the lives of her grand-kids for no good reason. Rajiv, too, was stupid- though not because of his religion. The first thing the guy should have done on becoming PM was to get SPG protection for life of all of his family. Perhaps this did not occur to him while he was in office. But, later on, when he put in Chandrashekhar, he should have insisted on it. It appears approval for this was finally given a day before his death! Under Rao, the SPG Act was amended to give protection to the family of the PM up to 5 years after demitting office. Modi changed the law in 2019- which Sonia must resent.

Rajiv also seems to have failed to provide adequate financial security for his family. It may be that he trusted the wrong people. Sonia was left in an embarrassing position when he died. My impression is that Sonia has secured the financial future of the dynasty through real estate dealings. That is a good thing. Indians don't want political leaders to be vulnerable to foreign bribery. Does she want her grand-children to join politics? I think she sees that politics in India is quite lucrative and interesting provided you don't hold any important office and thus don't get targetted. The Dynasty can survive on a smaller scale just as some of the erstwhile Royals have survived. Again, this is no bad thing. The mistake is to take a job which is beyond your capacity. That can get you killed. 

My verdict on Sonia is that she was a true 'pati-vrata' who protected the family legacy.  Sadly, her son is a moon-calf. As President Obama said- “Rahul Gandhi has a nervous, unformed quality about him, as if he were a student who'd done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject.' Sonia, by contrast, took the trouble to study Hindi and acquired some knowledge of Indian history and culture. She speaks rarely but doesn't say things which might get her shot. Rajiv's big mistake was to say, in an interview, that he might send troops back to Sri Lanka. All he meant was that the thing hadn't been a collosal error. Sadly, Prabhakarn, the head of the Tamil Tigers, took it to mean that he had only a narrow window of opportunity to kill Rajiv while he was still in opposition. 

My fear is that Rahul will be killed if he becomes PM. Why? He has said that India is like the EU. There is a right of secession. This means some bunch of nutters will accuse him of going back on his word and not splitting up the country. Then, they will kill him. The truth is, Modi is the man who stands between Sonia and a third bereavement. Hopefully, Yogi will succeed him & her grandchildren will grow old without the trauma of losing close relatives to an assassin's bullet. 

Leeuwenis & Eisler on Believing and Thinking

 

Neil Van Leeuwenis, a Philosophy professor, & Jacob Eisler, a Law Professor, have gotten together to write an essay for Aeon- about

Believing and thinking

Thinking is brain activity of a particular sort. It is objective and can be altered by objective means- e.g. drinking lots of beer. Beliefs are not necessarily thoughts nor do they arise in the brain. They may be purely emotional. The word 'Belief' derives from the West Germanic compound *ga-laubon, meaning "to hold dear, esteem, or trust".The base component *laub- derives from the PIE root *leubh-, which means "to care, desire, or love"- i.e. a matter of the heart, not the head. It may be wholly ontologically dysphoric- not at home in the world but directed to some very different, incompossible, type of world. 

The object of love is idealised and may bear only a tenuous connection with reality.  Mummy may say 'I believe in you' at the same time as she confesses she doesn't think you can become a successful Beyonce impersonator because you are ugly and wholly without talent. What Mum means is she loves you regardless of what you look like or how much you earn. 

Our two Professors take a different view- 

The separation of church and state

which is political. It arises in countries which do not have an Established Religion. The US differs from the UK in this respect. Thus, in the UK, when the Anglican Church's General Synod wants to change one of its rules (called 'Measures') the approval of the British Parliament is required. By contrast, the Episcopalian Church in the US does not require the approval of any American Legislature to enact any measure. 

has an unspoken psychological basis: we choose what we believe,

No we don't. Mummy didn't 'choose' to love us and believe in us and vice versa. One may distinguish belief from Faith in that the former may be linked to some particular description of reality- e.g that Heaven & Hell are as real as this world- whereas Faith is founded upon a mysterey- something we can't even begin to describe. 

but not what we think

Sadly, we can't choose what we thnk which is why I am compelled to admit I am a shit poet. I suppose, if I took a lot of drugs, I might briefly think otherwise but I'd soon end up thinking Pink Elephants were flying around the room shitting on my head. 

The idea of separating church and state

starts, for Western Europe,  with the Anabaptists in 1520. In England, Thomas Helwys &, in America, Roger Williams articulated this position in a manner which directly influenced the 13 Colonies choosing to go down this road. However, it wasn't till 1830 that all States embraced this doctrine. By then, the British were prepared to concede Catholic Emancipation & the reduction or elimination of discriminatory laws against Jews, Dissenters and, finally, even Atheists. 

– now entrenched in many modern liberal democracies – is in some ways strange.

No. What was strange was the Government forcing people to attend a particular Church. Some, at least, were bound to rebel or run away. But such people were often more productive and innovative and thus the State lost revenue and military capacity.  

After all, governments must keep themselves informed and inform their citizens.

Why? People can do this better for themselves. Why pay money to bureaucrats to do it for you? On the other hand, it is true that governments must wipe their own bums. This means they must wipe everybody's bum- right?  

That’s why they turn to the science of meteorology to predict weather patterns

There can be a private meteorology service.  

, to economics to understand patterns of growth and decline,

Most economists work for the private sector 

and to the medical sciences to improve public health.

this is also the case of medical research 

So why wouldn’t governments also keep close alliances with religious institutions to know what’s going on with God?

No religion claims to know 'what's going on with God'. Some claim that they know what God wants us to do. This tends to involve giving money to religious nutters. 

Separating church and state appears strange from other perspectives as well. In the historical sweep of large-scale human societies, it’s a relative newcomer, often associated with the United States’ founding father Thomas Jefferson.

Jeff championed the disestablishment of the Episcopalian Church in Virginia (which happened in 1786). But Maryland did it 10 years earlier. But Pennsylvania & Rhode Island never had it in the first place because William Penn, in the former case, & Roger Williams, in the latter, weren't Anglican. Williams is particularly important in that he eventually became a 'Seeker'- i.e. Seeker—he rejected all existing organized churches as corrupt.  He sought to live by his own conscience while waiting for Christ to re-establish a true church

In 1802, Jefferson asserted the principle of separation in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God … that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature

their Federal legislature. The States could do what they liked. There was dual sovereignty which, at that time, was weighted towards the States.  

would ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

Jefferson told a Jewish Doctor that 'in matters of religion, divided we stand, united we fall.'  

We’re fans of Jefferson’s principle, one of us (Neil Van Leeuwen) being a philosophy professor who grew up in the Christian Reformed Church, and the other (Jacob Eisler) being a law professor who regularly attends synagogue. But Jefferson’s letter makes putting the principle into practice sound simpler than it is

It is simplicity itself. Any law interfering with religious freedom (or freedom of conscience) is ultra vires.  

– as though governments could be entirely hands-off when it comes to people’s beliefs, or ‘opinions’.

Nobody claimed that anybody or anything can be entirely hands-off with respect to our affections or expectations.  

That, however, can’t be right: engaging with and shaping political, social and other kinds of beliefs is actually a core function of government.

No. It may be desirable (i.e. an instrument, not a function) for some particular purpose- e.g. to whip up patriotic sentiment to get people to enlist in the Army or buy War bonds- but it is not the purpose of the Government to brainwash its subjects.  

Public education guides what people believe about everything from mathematics to history to astronomy.

Fuck off! Public Schools are shit. That's why Charter Schools are popular with those who can't afford to go private.  

Governments also shape beliefs for policy reasons.

No. Expectations regarding Government actions have policy implications. If beliefs can be shaped by policy, why not make it the task of the Government to ensure that each person believes he or she is the most admired, admirable, and happiest person on the planet? 

Perhaps these two scholars think the best Government is that depicted in the 'Matrix' films. Use human beings as batteries but control their brain-waves so they think they are living their best life in Utopia. 

If fire department officials learn that people believe a building is safe

that is expectation. It is objective. One may say, 'I believe that God will work a miracle such that this high risk building won't burn down'. But, in that case, belief conflicts with 'rational' expectation (i.e. the prediction of the correct theory).  

when it isn’t, they will try to change what people believe about the building’s safety.

No. They may have a duty to evacuate the residents and get the building condemned. They don't have a duty to persuade nutters or senile people or anybody else.  

Belief is also a category of legal interest. If a psychotherapist, for example, believes a patient is a danger to himself or others, the therapist is obligated by law to report that belief.

That is an expectation. The therapist may say 'I believe in you. In my heart of hearts, I am confident you won't actually chop off the head of your Mummy. However, given your diagnosis, the rational expectation is that you pose a risk to others or yourself.'

All this means that Jefferson’s ‘wall of separation’ can’t sensibly prohibit governments from intervening on beliefs of any type whatsoever.

Just as laws against murder can't stop murder. So what? All Jeff was saying was that the matter was justiciable. This didn't mean that if a Govt. policy discriminated against a particular religion, the Courts would always provide a remedy. It just meant that it was possible they might do so.  

Rather, Jefferson – along with advocates of the principle who came after him – must have presupposed that there is something distinctive about religious beliefs that makes it reasonable to give them a different legal status.

No. They treated religious beliefs in the same way as they treated any other type of belief. But so did the Latitudinarian Anglican England which was content with outward conformity. In private, you might lurve the Pope or be a Deist, but so longer as you paid your tithes and attended the Established Church regularly, you would face no persecution. 

But what is this distinctive thing? Is it that religious beliefs concern God? No, because Buddhism is a religion with its own beliefs,

regarding the gods. They are inferior to the Buddha & may serve him faithfully- e.g. Hanuman & Ganapati. 

yet Buddhism has no supreme deity.

The Buddha is supreme. He has various incarnations.  

Is it that religious beliefs concern the supernatural generally? No, because many superstitions that aren’t part of a religion concern the supernatural too. Is it that religious beliefs concern morality, as the biologist Stephen Jay Gould once suggested? No, because many religious beliefs aren’t about morality, and many moral beliefs aren’t religious. In any case, any system of government must presuppose some moral beliefs – eg, that murder is wrong – to be a government at all. These considerations might make one despair of articulating the psychological distinction of interest – what’s different about religious ‘belief’? – that’s needed to make sense of separating church and state in the first place.

These two cretins don't get that 'separation of Church & State' had to do whether people would be fined for not attending the Established Church and whether they were allowed to build their own Churches, Schools, etc. In Massachusets, a Jew had to pay to support the established Episcopalian Church but could not set up a Synagogue for his own people till about 1830. That is why the first such place only opened in 1842. Prior to that the nearest synagogue was in Rhode Island.  

Such attempts at characterising religious belief fail, we think, because they focus on belief contents, or what the believing is about.

It was not the belief but the behaviour which was criminalised. An atheist was left alone provided he kept his views to himself. Still, he had to pay for the maintenance of the established church.  

But since any given idea can be believed in a religious way or not, that won’t work. Our suggestion, then, is that religiously believing is a different attitude from ordinary matter-of-fact believing – a different way of relating to ideas – and that this is what’s distinctive about religious belief.

religious believing is different from ordinary believing because it is religious. Similarly Hindu religious believing is different from ordinary religous believing. Why? That's how predication works.  

In other words, sacralising an idea is different from just taking it to describe how things are.

So is sexualising it. In the one case, prayer may be involved. In the other, masturbation.  

Furthermore, empirical research in cognitive science and anthropology of religion, along with accompanying philosophical analysis, can help reveal characteristic features of the difference in attitude we’re after.

Stupid shite can help stupider shite to be asserted 

To have specific terms, we call that the difference between religious credence and factual belief. Understanding this difference, we’ll see, helps make sense of Jefferson’s wall of separation,

which was political. Different Colonies had different dominant sects. That's why the Federal Government wanted to stay out of religion. But States with established Churches lost enterprising communities to more secular States. Rhode Island prospered industrially and commercially at the cost of Massachusetts. However, its pro-debtor policies (causing it to be named 'Rogues' island) held back its rise as a an alternative financial center. 

and supports the rationale for separating church and state in liberal democracies more generally.

Liberalism is about limited government. That's what these two pedagogues don't understand. They think the Government shoulld be wiping everybody's bum or, at the very least, washing their brain. 

Whatever they are, ‘beliefs’ come in different varieties. The word ‘belief’ is polysemous – meaning it can refer to a range of different-but-related things – and it subsumes a motley crew: from humdrum factual beliefs (say, about where the ice-cream store is) to superstitions (like those found in astrology), and from moral beliefs about murder to philosophical beliefs about how ‘all is one’. As mentioned earlier, beliefs can also be categorised by their contents (what is the belief about? Is it about politics? Or maybe about a probable scientific theory?) Or by the attitude they embody (how does a person relate to given ideas or contents?) Here, however, we focus on the differences between matter-of-fact believing and religious credence as distinct ways in which people process ideas.

Credence of any type does not require idea processing. The medicines we take and the gadgets we use are based on ideas far beyond our ken.  

There are, of course, more varieties of belief-like attitudes. But we home in on factual belief and religious credence since the differences in those attitudes matter most to the psychology of separating church and state.

They are completely irrelevant. The only thing which is relevant is relevant legislation or case law. 
Everson v. Board of Education (1947) says that though tax money can't be spent to aid any sect, it can be spent on a child even if that child belongs to this rather than that sect. In England, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the Dissenters had launched a Passive Resistance Campaign because rate payers were having to fund Anglican Schools. Common sense prevailed. The money was for the kid, not the fucking Whore of Babylon. 

Ethnographies of religion, like the anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back (2012), feature the devout talking of their ‘beliefs’ as a matter of choice. One of the congregants from the Vineyard Church whom Luhrmann interviewed told her: ‘There is always a choice to believe what it is.’ And a common theme in the Vineyard is choosing Jesus, which means choosing to believe in Jesus. Nor is choosing ‘belief’ unique to Christianity. People around the world switch religions for reasons of romance or for other social incentives, which means voluntarily choosing what religious credence to have.

There are incentive and mimetic effects but habit is king over all.  

But suppose someone offered you $1 million to believe, in a matter-of-fact way, that lions are vegetarians. Could you do it?

Yes. This is Newcombe's problem or Kavka's toxin or just thinking your spouse is faithful coz they're wealthy & good in bed. 

We doubt it, even if you wanted the money. You could voluntarily imagine that lions are vegetarians, or you might pretend to believe it. But if you know that lions eat meat, you can’t just choose to believe the contrary.

Lions the garden of Eden ate herbs. That is their natural condition. For a million dollars, I will affirm this Christian belief, though I will have the humility to admit that my faith is fragile. Pray for me!  

This is one illustration of how factual belief is not under voluntary control. Or, as one of us (Neil) has put it in Religion as Make-Believe (2023): if you factually believe it, you can’t help believing it. Try for a moment to factually believe that New York City is in Quebec,

Louis d'Ailleboust de Coulonge did, quite properly, annex New Amsterdam to Quebec. Sadly it is illegally occupied by fucking Yankee Doodles like Zohran Mamdani. 

that Iceland is in the Southern Hemisphere,

It will be- when the poles switch once again.  

or that Justin Bieber speaks Swahili as his mother tongue.

The true 'language of the coast' is English and thus it is the Swahili of our age. 

This gives us our first processing difference between religious credence and matter-of-fact belief:

Difference number 1: religious credence is voluntary,

conversion may be- though it may equally be experienced as imposed by God- but, speaking generally, religious credence is a matter of natural oikeiosis or habitus. I am a Hindu coz my beloved Mummy & Daddy were Hindu because their beloved Mummies & Daddies & c.  

while factual belief is involuntary.

You can chose which criteria are used to establish a factual claim. As a supporter of the Bourbons (or a dude who drinks too much bourbon) I think New York ought to belong to the French Department of Quebec. I may go further. I may say 'facts refer to de jure status. New York is de jure part of Quebec'. This may fly under the radar as a legalistic type of parsing or it may be dismissed as a mere jest or foolish type of equivocation. 

But if matter-of-fact belief isn’t voluntary, or responsive to the will, what does it respond to?

Like everything else, it responds, ultimately, to the fitness landscape- which, sooner or later, gets reflected in the incentive matrix. Mimetic effects speed things up.

Numerous psychological pressures come into play, including distortions like biases and misremembering. But that shouldn’t obscure the main driver of factual belief: evidence.

The evidence is always compatible with radically different hypotheses.  

Examples are so simple they’re easy to overlook. If you think, in a matter-of-fact way, that you started the washing machine and then, an hour later, see that the clothes you loaded are dry and still dirty, the evidence of your eyes extinguishes your prior factual belief.

No. It may be that you did start the machine but then a fuse was blown.  

If you think the supermarket is open and then arrive to find its lights are all out, that evidence changes your factual belief.

Unless, there is an electric blackout. You notice that the store clerk is letting in people and giving them a torch. However, he explains that you will have to pay in cash because the electronic tills are off-line.  

Empirical research reveals such evidence-responsiveness already in children and even infants. According to The Scientist in the Crib (1999) by the developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik and colleagues, young children and even babies learn about the world by forming mini-theories in different domains, and testing them – much like scientists do.

And mice are actually decision theorists.  

According to the research of the developmentalists Paul Harris and Melissa Koenig, children are also evidentially discriminating in how they learn from other people. Among other things, children are more likely to believe sources that have been accurate in the past than sources that have been inaccurate.

They are more likely to believe Mummy coz they love her. Daddy is viewed with derision.  

Is religious credence similarly responsive to evidence?

Consider faith. In Hebrews 11:1, we read: ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ If that’s right, then religious credence doesn’t depend on evidence in the way factual belief does.

Scriputre is evidence for the Faithful. 

In the Gospel of John, for example, we read about Doubting Thomas, who demands evidence that the man before him is Jesus resurrected; he consequently is an exemplar of what faith is not.

Still an Apostle. Peter was worse in that he denied he ever knew Christ.  

In the Old Testament, Noah was an exemplar of faith for building an enormous boat when there was no visible evidence of an impending flood.

He was a guy who got drunk & naked. Ham saw this. His brothers walked backward to cover the father's nakedness without looking at his needle dick & sniggering.  

Examples can be multiplied. If faith is to stand strong, religious credence must endure the slings and arrows of absent, or even contrary, evidence.

Faith is founded on a mystery. What keeps the Eschaton at bay is the mysterious economy of the Katechon.  

Contemporary cognitive science of religion bears out this point. In a series of cross-cultural studies, researchers have found that, from a young age, people, even in religious societies like Iran and the US, report lower levels of confidence in the invisible religious entities they profess, like God and angels, than in invisible scientific entities, like germs and oxygen.

Faith is the gift of God. If you don't have it, ask God for it. Sadly, STEM subject knowledge is in nobody's gift.  

That difference in confidence is presumably due to the felt poverty of evidence for the invisible religious entities.

The same is true of secular ideologies or entities or things which inspire affection or aversion.  

Yet people in some sense nonetheless ‘believe’ (read: religious credence) in the invisible religious entities 

or things like 'Justice' & 'Beauty' & 'Love'.         

The psychologists Emily Liquin, S Emlen Metz and Tania Lombrozo conducted studies finding that participants indicated a lower need for explanation when it came to religious beliefs as opposed to scientific beliefs, while at the same time having a higher mystery acceptance for religious beliefs.

This is the definition of junk social science. The thing isn't replicable.  

So people are often fine treating their religious credences as inexplicable and mysterious.

They are required to if they are Catholic or Orthodox- Mysterium fidei and all that, don't you know. I believe Protestants substitute some sort of clockwork for the soul. I expect it has something to do with Calvin & the watchmakers in Geneva. 

That gives us our second difference between religious credence and matter-of-fact belief:

Difference number 2: factual belief is highly vulnerable to evidence,

only if there is an incentive for 'belief revision' 

while religious credence is not vulnerable to evidence.

The evidence is internal. You may find your Faith has slipped away. This tends to happen to me when the collection box comes around. 

There are, of course, complications here. Religious apologists, for example, claim evidence for the stories and doctrines they profess

So do I. Ask Mary Poppins whether or not I've got a ginormous dong. I do. She knows that coz she was married to me in the Sixties. Since then, I've had a prolonged dry spell. Personally, I blame the stuff they put in the water. Also the whiskey & rum.  

. But claiming evidence is not the same as having one’s credences be vulnerable to it, and apologists are outliers anyway against the broad background of faithful who don’t usually pretend to treat their religious credence in an evidence-based way.

The evidence for an intuition is wholly internal. Apparently, the gut contains 500 million neurons (the enteric nervous system) that communicate with the brain via the vagus nerve. Gut feelings are a real thing.

Those differences, voluntary choice versus evidence-responsiveness, are differences in how religious credence versus factual belief arise in the first place

No. For specific protocol bound purposes, evidence of an admissible type is all that matters. A Shariah Court might come to the same conclusion as one in the Soviet Union. But that does not mean those nvolved have the same creed.  

. But what about downstream differences, like how they bring about action and behaviour?

Action and behaviour depend on reinforcing incentives or punishments.  

This brings us to the third difference. Have you ever heard the expression ‘once-a-week Christian’? The phrase describes people who act as though their Christian ‘beliefs’ are true one day a week – and then largely leave them dormant otherwise.

No. The phrase pretends that something more is required when such is not the case.  

Having grown up and participated in different religious traditions ourselves, we can say from personal experience that more people fit this compartmentalised model than would like to admit.

More people think the two of you are shitheads than you would willingly believe.  

Even those who practise devotion daily may act as if God is real specifically in sacred or ritual times and places, but then not really act this way otherwise.

Nothing wrong in that. We want a surgeon who is paying attention when he cuts us open, not one who is leaving it to God to guide his hand.  

If one asks religious people whether God is ever-present in their lives, they might say yes. But such probes might be like opening the refrigerator to see whether the light is always on. In Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006), the philosopher Daniel Dennett highlights this behavioural pattern in even blunter terms. He points out that people do things with God watching that they wouldn’t do with their own mothers watching,

that is entirely a matter of tempora et mores. European Royalt had 'bedding ceremonies' to confirm consummation of the marriage. I don't suppose the poor, sharing a hovel with the barnyard animals were greatly bothered with privacy when it came to procreation or defecation. The good thing about God is that he is impassable & thus unlikely to want to join in.

and then asks pointedly: ‘Do you really believe God is watching you? Perhaps not.’

Do these cunts really think they are smart? Oddly, yes. They literally are that stupid.  

We would say that people who profess to religious credence do typically have religious credence in a watchful deity – but, to Dennett’s point, not factual belief.

God is omniscient. But this is like 'unitarity'. The truth is, at least in theory, all information can be reconstituted.  There may really be a permanent 'witness' to all things. 

Empirical studies and ethnographic observations further exemplify the compartmentalisation of religious credence. According to one study, people in the Bible Belt start subscriptions to pornography sites at the same rate as in less conservative regions of the US – though not on Sundays, when the rate is significantly lower.

Coz that's the day for orgies- right? 

According to another study, charitable giving among the religious is not significantly different from among the secular – except for on Sundays.

Coz orgies leave you feeling generous.  

Turning to a different religious context, the experimental economist Erik Duhaime found that, in an economic game, 100 per cent of Moroccan shopkeepers in the Medina of Marrakesh chose the most charitable option while the call to prayer was audible, dropping to 50 per cent in the 20 minutes following it.

Junk Social Science.  

Another way of putting the point about compartmentalisation would be to say that religious credences tend to guide people’s symbolic actions – prayer, liturgies, rituals or even charity – but not their everyday instrumental actions, like commuting to work or feeding the dog.

Religion is about getting to Heaven. This may involve killing infidels.  

In those cases, the world is just a world, and supernatural beliefs are largely dormant.

Nope. You may believe ghosts or angels or such like are watching you, which is why you should not steal or have a crafty wank.  

And even if a religious tradition says its religious ‘beliefs’ should govern actions all the time, the fact that such norms exist and are hard to follow is actually evidence that such religious credences usually don’t guide action outside of sacred settings. (If they did, why have such a norm?)

Unless they do. Moh Tzu observed that belief in ghosts is socially utile because it was only the fear that ghosts were watching them which kept the peasants honest.  

Matter-of-fact believing, however, is not compartmentalised in this way. Factual belief, in the sense at work here, is a person’s default cognitive map of the world, and it is always on, whenever we act. Examples of ideas most people factually believe help to illustrate this point. Dried concrete is always hard. Electricity just exists. Wood comes from trees. And so on –

Plenty of people in traditional socieites think every tree has its own sprite or tutelary spirit. They are as real to them as electrons are real to us- i.e. the fact that we don't see them does not alter our belief in their existence.  

at least for people who believe those things in a matter-of-fact way. This lack of compartmentalisation can also be illustrated through a contrasting reference to pretend play: even if one pretends that a slab of concrete is a soft bed, one still stretches out on it slowly so as not to injure oneself, rather than flopping down on it.

unless you are drunk off your head. I'm not speaking of myself. It's this other bloke I know.  

That’s because the factual belief that concrete is hard still guides action even when one is pretending otherwise. Whenever you perform actions, you act on a mental model of how things just are, and a person’s default mental model of what the world is like is what we are calling factual belief.

This gives us the following:

Difference number 3: religious credence is compartmentalised, while factual belief is uncompartmentalised.

Factual belief is more compartmentalised. This is because there are different types of fact- e.g. in criminal law, it is a fact that OJ was innocent. In civil law, it was a fact that he was guilty. 

This is all just a snapshot of some of the psychological processing differences between religious credence and factual belief. There are, of course, complications and details to sort out – including hard-to-categorise examples, like conspiracy ‘beliefs’, along with quasi-religious ideological credences – but those shouldn’t obscure the overall picture.

Why not? The overall picture is shit.  

Religious people, by and large, have a two-map cognitive structure with factual belief and religious credence playing distinct roles.

Not if they are lawyers or follow some other protocol bound profession where 'quid facti' is compartmentalised depending upon the forum or type of jurisdiction. 

Factual belief is the evidence-responsive default cognitive map that guides action across settings, and religious credence is a chosen, compartmentalised cognitive map that becomes active in sacralised ritual settings.

Only to the same extent as ideology or habit or fashion or fad  

Those settings may occur as often as several times a day, just one day a week, or even more rarely than that, but compartmentalisation is there in any case.

This could be said of any shite you pull out of your arse.  

Before returning to the issue of separating church and state, let’s just address one more question about this overall psychological picture: are lay people (not just people who read and write essays like this one) aware of the psychological difference between factual belief and religious credence?

Yes. We know Mummy isn't really the best cook in the world. But we love her and, for us, nothing can beat the food she prepares. This is the difference between what is objective and alethic and what is subjective and imperative.  

The answer, the evidence suggests, is yes – at least in a vague way.

Only to the extent that it suggests these worhtless shitheads aren't babbling utter nonsense- but only in a vague way.  

To start, people often express their religious credences by saying things like ‘I personally believe…’ But one would not express a matter-of-fact belief, say, that their bicycle is in the garage, by saying: ‘I personally believe my bicycle is in the garage.’

The same is true in protocol bound fields. I personally believe  OJ i s criminally guilty and double jeapordy does not apply for some technical reason. However, I have to admit, this is not the general view in the legal profession.

They would rather say: ‘I think my bicycle is in the garage’ or just ‘It’s in the garage.’ The inclination to use ‘personally’ suggests people have an intuitive awareness that the kind of ‘belief’ being expressed is a different attitude, a different way of relating to ideas from matter-of-fact belief.

No. You say 'personally' to signal that others in your profession tend to take the opposite view. A Mathematician may say 'I personally believe in Mochizuki's proof. It's just that it doesn't prove the abc theorem as conventionally understood.' The meaning is that the profession as a whole rejects the proof but you, personally, hold a dissenting opinion.  

...Let’s return to Jefferson’s idea and to the political realm more generally. How does the psychological difference between factual belief and religious credence support the political principle of separating church and state?

It doesn't. Jefferson's US had no choice but to go down this road. But England, Holland, Ottoman Turkey, Tzarist Russia etc. doubled down on the Established Church. The French Revolution was crushed. The Catholic Church ruled the roost till 1905. 

We think that understanding the difference – psychological dynamics and all – helps us see two justifications that we couldn’t have articulated clearly otherwise.

First, the fact that religious credences are not vulnerable to evidence helps justify the idea that liberal democracies should not establish state religions, in the sense of compelling people to adhere to them.

Yet England still has an established church as does Denmark. Norway & Sweden have separated Church and State in recent years. This made no difference whatsoever. Liberal Democracies need kick-ass armies- or membership in a kick-ass military alliance- otherwise they are fucked. 

(This is the part of the ‘wall of separation’ captured in the so-called ‘establishment clause’ of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.) The reasoning here is simple. It starts by recognising that any actions a government takes will, in point of fact, be based on, and justified by, ‘beliefs’ of some sort. For example, quarantining people who return from the Democratic Republic of Congo at the time of an Ebola outbreak is based on officials’ factual belief – justified in this case – that those people risk spreading the disease.

No. Government actions are justified by the interests of particular classes of people. If it is in the interest of a powerful group to trade-off Ebola deaths against economic gain- that will be the outcome. No doubt, some lying politician will claim to genuinely believe that Ebola is caused by homosexual monkeys peeing upon Liberal perverts who drive foreign cars and eat Sushi. 

Importantly, if the beliefs in question are vulnerable to evidence,

of what sort? There is internal evidence- e.g. why do I feel so miserable seeing her with another dude? OMG! I'm in love! She's the one I want to marry and settle down with!' There is also external evidence. 'I wonder why she is sucking that bloke off. OMG! She doesn't really like me! She only came with me to the prom because she wanted to hook up with him!'  

as we argued that factual beliefs are, then they will be susceptible to change through the kind of dialogue-based argument and reasoning that is the deliberative heart of democracy.

Bureaucratic technocracy, maybe. But democracy isn't about deliberation. It's about getting a majority, or plurality, of votes. 

Basically, factual belief-based reasoning and policy-making allows everyone to participate,

No. It allows only those who know the facts and who have the academic or professional training or expertise to reason correctly. 

since factual beliefs respond to evidence, and evidential reasons are the property of everyone.

No. Even when you serve on a jury to make determinations of fact, the Judge directs to accept certaint expert testimony and reject other testimony which may apper even more authoritative.  

But, conversely, if a ‘belief’ is not responsive to evidence,

It isn't if it is not in our interest to accept the evidence 

as we argued religious credences are not,

I become an atheist any time someone suggests God wants me to give all my money away to the poor.  

then it won’t be movable by falsification-oriented argumentative reasoning

Nobody is moved by that shite, unless it is in their interest to be so.  

. Only people who already have the ‘belief’ will be convinced by decisions based on it. Thus, a policy explicitly religious in nature – imposing religious practice, for example –

would be fine with those who want a 'separating equilibrium' based on a costly (or costly to disguise) signal. In practice, this is what religious 'shibboleths' do.  

would lack tractability to the defining practices of democratic decision-making.

That is majoritarianism. In practice a democratic country can have a State Religion and make things very difficult for Dissenters. Thus, the 1937 Irish Constitution gives a special place to the Catholic Church. This provision was removed in 1972. The Blasphemy law remained till 2018. 

In short, liberal democracies should exclude religion-establishing policies in order to safeguard the rational communal deliberation that is at their centre.

But would they truly be liberal if they did so? Surely this is a matter that the majority of voters should decide? Otherwise, there is limited democracy.  

Private motivation and public justification are different things

All justification is different from motivation. Private acts, speaking generally, require no justification.  I don't need to explain why I want pizza rather than pasta for dinner. 

This perspective illuminates why policy is justified the way it is in liberal democracies. Even when they happen to be motivated by spiritual convictions, citizens tend to, and legislators must (if they are to be constitutionally respectable), frame the descriptive claims in their arguments in terms of matter-of-fact, universally tractable evidence.

This is an ipse dixit assertion. We don't know what evidence is 'universally tractable'. The sodomy ban may be justified by linking it to evidence that it causes earthquakes. The problem, in Social Sciences, is that causation, as opposed to correlation, is difficult to establish. At some point, you have to take a leap of faith. But, it frequently happens, you have to change your policies on the fly because things seldom work out as anticipated.  

Such framing yields public explanations that are better suited to liberal democratic coexistence than the mere direct clash of disparate religious ‘beliefs’.

Democracies have to use demotic language and adcaptum vulgi arguments. You can't assume every voter has a PhD in decision theory. But, even if this were the case, there would be sharp disagreements between such experts. 

This is apparent in one of the most controversial areas of contemporary policymaking: abortion law.

Which is about values, not evidence.  

Right now in the US, abortion policy runs from fairly permissive in some states to materially restrictive in others. Yet, while it’s true that many political actors are motivated to take positions on this issue that align with their spiritual beliefs and religious affiliations, they still attempt to justify those positions by appeal to beliefs that can be contested by reason and evidence.

Some do. Others don't.  

As a result, debate over how to respect ideals like sanctity of life can, at least in principle, be a matter of public dialogue that includes everyone.

So can debates over whether Smurfette is a virgin.  

We’ve focused on the US case here, because it is prominent in the history of separating church and state.

This is because of the big problem in England of Dissenters and the multiplication of such sects. 

But commitment to the kind of separation spelled out in the US with the First Amendment is mirrored across the globe, from Japan to Mexico

which was run by the Institutional Revolutionary Party for 71 years from 1929 to 2000.  

and from Portugal to Namibia.

Islamic countries seem to be going the other way- look at Erdogan's Turkey or Munir's Pakistan. 

Even the United Kingdom, which has state religions in the form of the Church of England

whose head is the Monarch 

and the Church of Scotland,

whose head is Jesus Christ. It is completely independent of the State in all matters of doctrine & appointments. 

places strict limits on what those state religions can and can’t do in the public sphere.

In civil matters- yes.  

Importantly, again, none of this prevents citizens and leaders from being motivated to prefer one policy over another due to their religious commitments. But private motivation and public justification are different things.

You can make your motivation public.  

Our present point is that the psychological difference between factual belief and religious credence helps explain why a principle that teases apart those two things makes sense.

This is indeed a justiciable matter. Since the 1960's both the Kirk & the Anglican Church has avoided any type of heresy trial or tribunal. However, there is no psychological difference between the literalists and those who put their faith in some arcane scientific, or pseudo-scientific, doctrine. It is a different matter that a Scientist may have religious or atheistical beliefs despite, or because, of the evidence he uncovers.  

Second, the fact that religious credences are psychologically compartmentalised helps justify the idea that, in a liberal society, ‘free exercise’ of religion is a reasonable ideal.

Would a hijab ban be justified? What about the right of a believer to refuse to serve a customer whose life-style she considers abhorrent for religious reasons?  

(This is the other side of the ‘wall of separation’, also captured in the First Amendment: government shouldn’t stop people from choosing which religion to follow, if any.)

What about those of diminished capacity or who are otherwise under the guardianship of the State?  

Here’s how this argument works. The compartmentalisation of religious credence, along with the fact that it operates as a ‘map’ distinct from factual belief,

Our factual beliefs may have non-factual foundations. It is very difficult to demarcate what is 'positive' from what is a 'value judgement'. Most philosophers now believe Popper's demarcation criteria fails as a stand-alone rule.  According to the Duhem-Quine thesis- when a scientific prediction fails, logic alone does not tell you which part of the theoretical network or auxiliary hypothesis is false. Scientists routinely shield core theories from refutation by adjusting background assumptions rather than abandoning the whole framework.

There is also the problem that if you believe in the unicity (oneness or absolute unity) of the universe—where everything that exists is part of one interdependent, fundamental reality—you may end up committing to a form of modal collapse if you also hold that this unified reality exists necessarily and accounts for all possible states of affairs. In this case, you may have something like Godel's ontological proof of God. In other words, you may be a Theist, without knowing it! Religious people may say that atheists of good character are actually of their own faith- they just haven't thought things through sufficiently. 

means that people who have religious credences are at least capable of setting them aside when it comes to interacting with people outside their own religion. (For example, people who have religious credence in the existence of demons don’t typically perform exorcisms on strangers in the supermarket.)

Our habits may be at odds with our beliefs.  

So, since people are capable of setting their religious credences aside in the public sphere, they should be free to keep and venerate them in private, in light of general considerations of privacy and autonomy. Public deliberation can then proceed on the basis of evidence-responsive factual beliefs, as well as moral beliefs that respond to reasons.

But evidence of great interest to the public can be of the following sort-  'I was a drug addicted criminal. Then I found Jesus. Now I am a captain of industry & have a loving family.' 

In short, the default compartmentalisation to which religious credence is prone makes it possible for people with a plurality of religious ‘beliefs’ to co-exist in a free society without a need for the state to challenge any of those ‘beliefs’ per se.

Not if those religious beliefs track racial or class differences. Suppose the Protestant minority owns all the business enterprises and has the best schools, colleges and hospitals. This minority may want Liberal Democracy under the rule of law with strict separation of church and state. But if the Catholic majority are poor, they may want 'Corporatism' & Church run public Schools and Colleges. The conflict between these two classes may lead to violence or ethnic cleansing. The minority might decide it is safer to support the more educated element in the Catholic clergy. 

To put this all together, our argument is this: the deal that separation of church and state offers to the religious – namely, that everyone gets religious freedom in exchange for abiding by a constitution that prevents government from establishing their specific religion – can work only

if religious differences aren't tracking differences in class, race, or historic privilege.  

because religious credences are psychologically compartmentalised

they generally arise through natural 'oikeiosis'. If you were born into a particular class and creed, chances are you will support your 'side' in a political or other conflict.  

and operate at a different level from factual belief.

It may be a fact that your parents were Catholic not Protestant. 

But the very fact of that default compartmentalisation is precisely what makes such a deal worth striking. Jefferson, we suspect, intuitively sensed this, when he composed his letter to the Danbury Baptists, quoted at the outset, assuring them that they wouldn’t be oppressed for their religious commitments. And perhaps we hear a foreshadow of the very idea of compartmentalisation in his line: ‘religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God.’

Jefferson was a politician. He told people what they wanted to hear.  

The possessive pronoun in that phrase (‘man and his God’) bespeaks the personal nature of religious credence.

as does the phrase 'the man and his ideology'.  

Religious credence, after all, is voluntary.

Not if it arises by oikeiosis or childhood conditioning 

That personal nature makes religious credence inapt for entry into public deliberation,

Why not? We have public deliberation about what is beautiful and what is fashionable and what is good etiquette. Why can't we deliberate abou the nature of our creed and what it would have us do under current circumstances.  

but it also makes it ripe for receiving the freedom from government interference into private lives that characterises liberal societies generally.

Sadly, the demand for government services in 'Income-elastic'. As a country becomes more affluent there is more, not less, government interference in our private lives. If we don't like it, we are welcome to retreat to a bunker in the woods and become a 'survivalist'.  

What is the likely future of Church & State relations? My guess is there will be more 'reasonable accomodation' of faith groups more particularly if they can act cohesively as voting blocks. 

k