OK, it’s by Michael McConnell, but it still counts in his Hosanna Tabor.

Seeking to escape the control of the national church, thePuritans fled to New England, where they hoped to elect their own ministers and establish their own modes of worship. See T. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church andState in America to the Passage of the First Amendment 3 (1986); McConnell, The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion, 103 Harv. L. Rev.1409, 1422 (1990).

Update: And Roberts didn’t just cite any Harvard Law Review article by Michael McConnell from 1990. He cited one–that I am pretty sure–was edited by none other than Barrack Obama!

Mr. Obama arrived at the [University of Chicago] law school in 1991 thanks to Michael W. McConnell, a conservative scholar who is now a federal appellate judge. As president of The HarvardLaw Review, Mr. Obama had impressed Mr. McConnell with editing suggestions on an article; on little more than that, the law school gave him a fellowship, which amounted to an office and a computer, which he used to write his memoir, “Dreams From My Father.”

Is this correct? If so, that’s pretty meta that the Chief–who never cites law review articles–cited the very article that effectively gave Obama the start of his academic career. Or maybe not.