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9781107639980

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In this important and challenging book, David Richards asks us to consider: how can fundamentalism in religion and law flourish in an advanced nation like the United States, given the deep consensus about the enduring values of democratic constitutionalism? Richards delves masterfully into the psychology of fundamentalism, diagnosing its irrationalities and showing how they endanger the existence of a free society. All citizens concerned about the erosion of democracy and the negative obstructionism to the progressive ideals of the Obama administration need to read this book. - Carol Gilligan, University Professor, New York University Fundamentalism in American Religion and Law presents a bold and intriguing psychological hypothesis, which may help to explain the continuing appeal of some weird and destructive ideas. - Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University [Richards is] to be congratulated for critiquing religious fundamentalism from within a religious perspective and offering alternative readings of religious tradition, rather than simply dissecting it from the outside. ... there is much to admire and chew over in this book. - Paul Horwitz, Concurring Opinions

In this important and challenging book, David Richards asks us to consider: how can fundamentalism in religion and law flourish in an advanced nation like the United States, given the deep consensus about the enduring values of democratic constitutionalism? Richards delves masterfully into the psychology of fundamentalism, diagnosing its irrationalities and showing how they endanger the existence of a free society. All citizens concerned about the erosion of democracy and the negative obstructionism to the progressive ideals of the Obama administration need to read this book. - Carol Gilligan, University Professor, New York University Fundamentalism in American Religion and Law presents a bold and intriguing psychological hypothesis, which may help to explain the continuing appeal of some weird and destructive ideas. - Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University [Richards is] to be congratulated for critiquing religious fundamentalism from within a religious perspective and offering alternative readings of religious tradition, rather than simply dissecting it from the outside. ... there is much to admire and chew over in this book. - Paul Horwitz, Concurring Opinions

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David A. J. Richards is Edwin D. Webb Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, where he teaches constitutional law, criminal law, and (with Carol Gilligan) a seminar on resisting injustice. He is the author of sixteen books, most recently Tragic Manhood and Democracy: Verdi's Voice and the Powers of Musical Art (2004); Disarming Manhood: The Roots of Ethical Resistance (2005); The Case for Gay Rights: From Bowers to Lawrence and Beyond (2005); Patriarchal Religion, Sexuality, and Gender: A Critique of New Natural Law (with Nicholas Bamforth, 2008); The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy's Future (with Carol Gilligan, 2009); and The Sodomy Cases: Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas (2009). He has served as vice president of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy and was the Shikes lecturer in civil liberties at the Harvard Law School in 1998.

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