A spate of Supreme Court decisions on the tension between religious freedom and the protective function of government has caused a sense of unease among religious people, says Robin Fretwell Wilson, the Roger and Stephany Joslin Professor of Law at Illinois and editor of the book The Contested Place of Religion in Family Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Wilson spoke to the Illinois News Bureau about the book, which features original scholarship from herself, Illinois professors Richard Kaplan and Robin Kar, and a host of additional scholars on the tension between religious freedom and the state’s protective function.

"It brings together scholars to talk about the post-Hobby Lobby landscape in the U.S., in which religious claims can come up across the entire lifecycle of the family, from birth to death," Wilson said. "In America, we’ve mostly focused on the birth side, with the battle over contraception and abortion rights. We haven’t focused as much on things in the course of a person’s life, like what happens when an inter-faith marriage breaks up and each parent wants to raise their children in their respective religion. How does the law resolve that problem?"

Full interview at news.illinois.edu.