"Written by a great scholar, independent thinker, lucid writer, and superb advocate, John T. Noonan, Jr.'s "Narrowing the Nation's Power provides a devastating attack on the logic of the Supreme Court's revival of states' rights, and makes complex legal doctrine enjoyable and readily understandable reading."--Jesse H. Choper, Earl Warren Professor of Public Law, University of California

A unique contribution of the United States to civilization is the invention of religious liberty. No nation before our own had moved beyond tolerance. No nation had made freedom of religion a cherished value. No nation had designated “exercise”, not mere opinion, as the value guaranteed. No nation had ever guaranteed in a written constitution that the nation would enact no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.