With much justification, the United States prides itself on guaranteeing a wide scope of religious liberty to people of all faiths and of none. Yet new issues in this area will constantly arise even in a generally successful and free legal order. Religious liberty may or may not be under assault on margins of varying importance, and a people intent on keeping or extending its religious liberty will need to be vigilant and to think carefully about the choices that are made in its court system.

This month we have invited four experts on U.S. religious liberty law to discuss recent and upcoming Supreme Court cases. They will offer a variety of perspectives, introducing themes and ideas from this area of law to interested readers in clear, accessible language, offering the best picture they can of the state of the debate among legal scholars. The Cato Institute’s own Ilya Shapiro has written the lead essay for the month; answering him will be David H. Gans, K. Hollyn Hollman, and Robin Fretwell Wilson. After each has responded, we will host a month of discussion on the issues they have raised. We look forward to readers’ comments during the month that the issue is live.