ESSENTIAL RELIGIOUS PRACTICES: TEST WITHOUT PRECEDENT

Abstract

This paper reviews relevant Supreme Court constitution bench cases on religious freedom and argues that the essential religious practices test, as commonly and currently understood, lacks precedential authority. Contrary to what the Supreme Court has recently suggested, the relevant case law cannot be plausibly characterised as a conflict between two equally weighty lines of precedent, with one line favouring and one disfavouring the essential religious practices test.