Law, religion, culture, and virtue are intimately related. How much can laws either promote virtue or prevent vice? Do good laws create good people? Or does the virtue of the citizenry determine the nature of the laws of the land? What are the moral and cultural conditions for a well-functioning democracy? Questions such as these motivate the CRCD’s engagement in matters of social policy, which range from commentary and analysis to research and advocacy.

In one sense both virtue and culture are upstream from politics and legal realities, but in another sense the constitutional, statutory, and regulatory environment influences the habits, mores, and morality of a people. The law inevitably has an educative function even as it has a restraining and protecting purpose. Whether and how positive law can address social questions is a matter of deep prudential judgment, however, and depends to a great extent on the historical, cultural, and spiritual contexts of a particular time and place.

The CRCD’s social policy work recognizes the ways in which positive law can help the institutions of civil society flourish or fail. In addition to addressing these broader social factors, the CRCD focuses especially on religious liberty and free exercise for individuals as well as institutions. Cultural and civil associations are important and often underappreciated or even overlooked elements of social analysis. Thus the CRCD emphasizes that social flourishing requires the health and freedom of families, houses of worship, charities, and educational institutions alongside market-based enterprises and political order.