ROME — Justice Samuel Alito took to the Eternal City last week to sound, in a remarkable address, a clarion call for religious liberty, defending its flourishing on American shores even as he sharply castigated critics abroad.

The address, delivered July 21 to a conference of the Religious Liberty Institute of Notre Dame Law School, signaled a jurist as comfortable speaking ex cathedra as when draped in black robes.  He described freedom of faith as a bulwark against tyranny.

“Religious liberty,” he said, not far from Vatican City, “is under attack in many places because it is dangerous to those who want to hold complete power.” Justice Alito, in this place, admitted that “I find myself thinking about the proud civilization that was centered here two millennia ago.” 

The justice reserved special ire for foreign potentates who have criticized Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the decision he authored that determined the Supreme Court had made an error when it discovered in the Constitution a right to an abortion.

Justice Alito wryly suggested that one critic, Prime Minister Johnson, “paid the price” for his opposition, announcing his intent to quit 10 Downing Street just days after the opinion was issued. Mr. Johnson had called the decision “a backward step” for America.

Inserting a legal joke that landed with the cognoscenti in attendance, Justice Alito jested “Post hoc ergo propter hoc, right?” That phrase refers to the fallacy in which a later event is said to be the cause of an earlier one, knowingly poking fun at his argument that it was Mr. Johnson’s opposition to Dobbs that undid his government.      

The justice also named Prime Minister Trudeau, who called Dobbs a “horrific” decision. Justice Alito cuttingly noted that these leaders from abroad were “perfectly fine commenting on American law,” although Mr. Johnson did preface his remarks by stressing  “this is not our court, it’s not our jurisdiction.”

President Macron expressed “solidarity with the women whose liberties are being undermined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” In response to these snipes, Justice Alito observed that he “had the honor this term of writing I think the only supreme court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders.”

Justice Alito spoke of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, as having compared, at the United Nations last week, “the decision whose name may not be spoken with the Russian attack on the Ukraine.” The Justice’s reference was to the unmentionability of the Harry Potter villain’s appellation, Lord Voldemort.

Prince Harry, speaking at Turtle Bay, had intoned that “from the horrific war in Ukraine to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom.”

One lawmaker who likely agrees is Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who retweeted a video of Justice Alito’s remarks with the gloss that “It was Alito’s opinion that leaked. That fact paired with his politicized remarks below should be alarming to anyone.” She cited the court’s “legitimacy crisis” as reason for the Chief Justice “to share the progress & results of SCOTUS’ leak investigation.” 

In moving from defense to offense and outlining his positive vision, Justice Alito expressed the intent to “convince people that religious liberty is worth defending” even for those who are not themselves religious. For his own part, the justice expressed his belief that “our hearts are restless until we rest in God.” 

The impulse to suppress religious freedom, Justice Alito noted, emerges from “something dark and deep in the human DNA,” namely “the tendency to distrust and dislike people who are not like ourselves.” 

The Supreme Court term that just ended was a banner one for proponents of religious liberty. In Carson v. Makin, the Nine held that Maine is required to fund religious private schools as well as their secular equivalents if no public schools are able to serve pupils within a reasonable geographic distance. 

Another case, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, held that a high school football coach’s private post game prayer on the field was protected by both the Free Exercise and Free Speech clauses of the First Amendment. In both Carson and Kennedy, Justice Alito voted with the court’s majority.