Summary: During the past decade, courts have struggled to reconcile anti-discrimination statutes with claims by private organizations to First Amendment protection for decisions regarding their missions and membership. Can the Boy Scouts expel a gay Scoutmaster? (Boy Scouts of America v. Dale) Can a state law school deny official recognition to a religious club that requires members to affirm certain beliefs regarding homosexuality? (Christian Legal Society v. Martinez) In resolving these questions courts have frequently invoked the freedom of "expressive association," a phrase that appears nowhere in the text of the First Amendment but has been a part of modern judicial doctrine. -- In Liberty�s Refuge, Professor Inazu argues that this "expressive association" mode of analysis is at least in part responsible for what he argues is inadequate protection for associational autonomy--and that a return to the more textually and historically grounded "right of the people peaceably to assemble" is necessary to recapture the benefits of a meaningful pluralism. The Constitution contemplated forcefully dissenting political and expressive groups that would serve as a check on majority rule�s tendency to turn into a force for stifling nonconformity. To maintain an environment in which these groups will flourish, Inazu contends, our First Amendment jurisprudence must recover a more robust conception of associational autonomy grounded in a better understanding of the centrality and breadth of the assembly right. -- John Inazu, a professor at Washington University Law School, is joined by critical commenter Michael McConnell, the Richard & Frances Mallery Professor and Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, as well as Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, to discuss the book.
