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Julian Sanchez thinks burqa bans are a bad idea:
If the premise is that women who wear the burqa are being robbed of their agency and dignity--and that even those who protest that they wish to wear it are victims false consciousness--how is the ban supposed to be enforced? By fining or detaining or otherwise harassing the very women who, on this theory, are the most oppressed? By barring them access to public places, government buildings, maybe even courts and police stations? I suppose you could direct the penalties toward their male relations, but that hardly seems like a good way to reinforce the concept of the equal agency of women. The only way this seems to actually work--and by "work" I mean "severely hamper religious freedom without still further harmful consequences"--is if it's like smoking bans, where you see rapid norm changes and widespread compliance with very limited need for actual sanctions. Except there's very little historical reason to expect it to go that way.
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