Religious Liberty in the Supreme Court - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0896331784 ISBN 13: 9780896331785

Publisher: Ethics & Public Policy Center, 1993

Synopsis

The simple language in which the First Amendment forbids Congress to make laws that "establish" religion or prohibit its free exercise has been anything but simple to apply. Since 1940, the Supreme Court has been called upon to decide many cases involving the so-called religion clause - in such matters as prayer in public schools, unemployment compensation for persons whose religious scruples led to their unemployment, state aid to church-related schools, the display of Nativity scenes on city land, and tax exemption for property owned by religious organizations.
Twenty-five of the most important of these cases are brought together here, introduced, excerpted, and annotated by Terry Eastland. With fifteen of the cases there is also a sampling of contemporaneous editorial comment, from such sources as the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Christian Century, and The New Republic.
In Part Two, three well-known legal scholars - Mary Ann Glendon, Michael J. Sandel, and Michael W. McConnell - comment on trends in the Court's religion-clause jurisprudence and their implications for our public life.

About this title

About the Author

Terry Eastland, resident fellow at EPPC, is the author of "Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency" (Free Press, 1992).

From Publishers Weekly

The Framers were thinking of the federal government in 1791 when they amended the Constitution for the first time, prohibiting Congress from enacting any "law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." But in the 1940s, the Supreme Court greatly broadened the protections provided in those two religious-liberty clauses when it found that they also applied to actions of the individual states. In assuming that position, the Court placed itself at the epicenter of the ongoing debate about religion's role in a society that is secularly governed. Eastland, Forbes Media Critic executive editor and a senior fellow at Washington's Ethics and Law Policy Center, promises in his foreword to furnish us "a basic reader on the church-state debate," a purpose he accomplishes with authority by chronologically presenting the majority and dissenting opinions handed down in the 25 most significant church-state cases argued before the Court from 1940 to 1992. To this illuminating core, Eastland adds a sampling, drawn from major newspapers, religion magazines and other media, of diverse editorial opinion about many of the cases, as well as reflective essays by prominent law and government professors. The resulting whole provides a trenchant overview ranging from neoconservative to liberal perspectives on the implications of the Court's evolving jurisprudence about religion's impact upon American life. A valuable aide to plumbing the complexities of church-state issues.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ethics & Public Policy Center
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0896331784
• ISBN 13: 9780896331785
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512
• Editor: Eastland Terry