I said in the introduction to this book that a basic understanding of the morality of human rights – which I sought to provide in Part I – greatly enhances our understanding of the constitutional morality of the United States. In particular, and as the chapters that follow illustrate, a basic understanding of the morality of human rights greatly enhances our understanding of the three rights to which we are now about to turn, each of which is part of the constitutional morality of the United States; each of which, that is, is both internationally recognized as a human right and entrenched in the constitutional law of the United States: the right not to be subjected to “cruel and unusual” punishment, the right to moral equality, and the right to religious and moral freedom.

Before we proceed further, a clarification is in order. A right is “entrenched in the constitutional law of the United States,” in the sense in which I mean, if either of two conditions is satisfied. Let R stand for a particular right.