Judicial campaign against polygamy and the enduring legal questions

Journal ArticleFor lay people the chief virtue of our Constitution is not in its distribution of power or in its guarantees of participation in governmental processes but in the protections it affords individual liberties, not least of which is freedom of conscience. Yet ratification of the Bill of Rights did not fix in stone the content of constitutional guarantees. Instead, it was left to the judiciary to interpret the simple phrases of the first eight amendments in concrete cases, illuminated by evidence of the framers' intent and changing social values. Perhaps no provision of the Bill of Rights better exemplifies this process of judicial interpretation than the First Amendment's free exercise clause