The Believer and the Powers That Are is a casebook on religious liberty. Its unusual origins seemed to promise something different - few casebooks are published by Macmillan, supported by a grant from the Lilly Endowment, or commissioned as part of a multi-volume project by distinguished scholars at Princeton. The book innovates in important ways, most notably in its extensive attention to history. Yet it is still essentially a casebook, with the usual strengths and weaknesses of the genre.

Citation
Douglas Laycock, Reflections on Two Themes: Teaching Religious Liberty and Evolutionary Changes in Casebooks (reviewing John T. Noonan, Jr., The Believer and the Powers That Are: Cases, History, and Other Data Bearing on the Relation of Religion and Government) 101 Harvard Law Review 1642–1656 (1988).
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