Uncivic Diversity

Abstract

There is much that I agree with in Peter Schuck's important Diversity in America. The book is a model of empirical scholarship and it makes challenging arguments about an incredibly wide range of policy issues. I want, however, to dissent from some of Schuck's basic principled claims, and in particular the second dimension of neutrality that he announces at the end of the quotation above. That judges and other public officials should not take sides (and remain neutral) in religious controversies (as such) is surely correct. That judges and other public officials should not take sides (and remain neutral) when basic public values come into conflict with non-public values-religious or otherwise-seems to me incorrect.