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Pantagruel Comes for the Establishment Clause
In the second book of the 16th century novel by Rabelais, the voracious young giant Pantagruel, “large as life and much nosier,” is sent to Paris for his education. There he displays prodigious...
View ArticleVictory in Spite of Ourselves
David Cortman showed remarkable poise and command last January when he made his first appearance before the Supreme Court. The case was Reed v. Gilbert, and he represented the cause of a small,...
View ArticleThe Christmas Holiday of 1870 and the Establishment Clause
It does not take a sophisticated legal realist to recognize the hopelessness of any claim that the status of Christmas as a state or federal holiday violates the Establishment Clause. Justices don’t...
View ArticleEverson’s Syllogism
Almost every constitutional law scholar—Left, Right, and center—agrees that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence is, to put it kindly, confused. Much of the blame for this mess...
View ArticleRoger Sherman: An Old Puritan in the New Republic
Connecticut’s Roger Sherman was the only Founder to help draft and sign the Declaration and Resolves (1774), the Articles of Association (1774), the Declaration of American Independence (1776), the...
View ArticleWhen the Enlightenment and Evangelical Christianity Got Together
Last week, on January 16, America marked Religious Freedom Day. The day commemorates enactment of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom of 1786, a precursor of the First Amendment. Written by...
View ArticleReligion Currently Poses Less Danger to Democracy Than Other Social Movements
In my last post, I described why religious sentiments can help democracy produce public goods and beneficial reforms. Of course, religious sentiments are not the only kind of attitude toward the...
View ArticleThe Court Should Tear Down Everson, Not the Maryland Cross
Nearly a century ago, the State of Maryland permitted a group of citizens to establish a memorial cross for veterans of World War I on property owned and maintained by the state. This cross is still...
View ArticleWill the Court Finally Kill the Lemon Test Ghoul?
In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), Justice Hugo Black clearly proclaimed that the “First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We...
View ArticleReligious Schools and the Freedom of the Church
In a pair of cases involving the religious-freedom rights of parochial schools, the Supreme Court on Wednesday re-affirmed a core First Amendment rule and a crucial aspect of church-state separation,...
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