Abstract
The Roberts Court’s embrace of the conservative Christian agenda—from religious liberty to the erosion of the separation of church and state—has been well documented. This Article contributes to this growing body of scholarship by coining and developing the concept of judicial zealotry: an approach to judging, precedent, and the Court’s self-conception that mirrors the moral and religious attitudes of the radical Christian worldview legal movement. Judicial zealotry goes beyond the run-of-the-mill judicial activism of eras past. It is mission-driven, self-righteous, and insular—consistent with the biblically grounded worldview of the Christian Right’s legal institutions even as the Justices decline to invoke God and the Bible explicitly in their reasoning.
Drawing on original interview and participant observation data from Regent Law School, Liberty University Law School, and Ave Maria School of Law, this Article traces the roots of judicial zealotry from the Federalist Society’s early embrace of judicial restraint and its deliberate marginalization of Christian nationalists, through the Christian Right’s turn to the courts and the construction of its own mission-oriented legal institutions, to the Roberts Court’s quiet adoption of the movement’s defining characteristics. Those characteristics are threefold: (1) a restoration mandate that deploys “history and tradition” to return America to a white, patriarchal, and Christian past; (2) the protection of Christians as a persecuted minority; and (3) an insular “Holy Huddle” that reinforces judicial righteousness and insulates the Justices from criticism. The Article concludes that the Justices’ continued concern with elite legitimacy constrains the reach of Christian worldview jurisprudence on the Court, ensuring that its Christian nationalist project will proceed cloaked in the secular language of originalism and history rather than open biblical reasoning—but will proceed nonetheless.
