Abstract
Since Evangelicals entered the political arena in the late 1970s, scholars and media have paid much attention to the so-called New Religious Right of American politics. Far less attention has been given to a related and simultaneously emerging phenomenon: Evangelical law firms. This MA thesis examines the reasons for the establishment of American Evangelical law firms, their main strategies, and their influence on societal development in the United States and internationally. While recent studies indicate that the earliest research on the Evangelical movement s political influence overestimated its impact, this thesis argues that the influence of Evangelical law firms has been underestimated and that their potential power has not been fully understood. Serving the same causes as the Evangelical political lobby groups, though less visible to the public, the impact of the law firms can be felt in a variety of fields, affecting the lives of millions: the right of American students to establish bible study groups or pray together on public school ground; the presence of religious monuments in the cultural landscape; abortion and marriage regulations; the drafting of significant legislation, such as the USA PATRIOT Act; and the display of crucifixes in Italian class rooms. This thesis highlights the role that the law firms argumentation plays for their influence. Concentrating on one leading law firm – the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by Pat Robertson in 1990 – the thesis shows that the Evangelical law firms function as mediators between the Evangelical movement and governmental institutions, and as translators of the movement s religious and moral causes into a neutral, secular language. This translation is not only necessary to convince a (per definition) secular court on a certain issue. More important, the law firms provide supportive judges with neutral arguments that can be used as legitimate justifications for the court s decision in a pluralistic society. The thesis focuses on two issues which have been particularly important to the Evangelical movement: the fight against abortion and the protection of public religious expressions. A main contention is that the arguments presented by the law firms must be understood in light of the overall cause of the Evangelical movement, which involves the notion of a Christian national identity. The thesis further shows how this notion is connected to a certain interpretation of the American constitutional order, which in turn gives a different understanding of popular terms like religious freedom, liberty and (human) rights than how these terms are usually understood from a liberal point of view. The main focus of the thesis is on the US federal court system, but it also discusses cases from the European Court of Human Rights.