Religion and the Law

Religion and the Law PDF Author: Elizabeth Eddy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351493876
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
There are few issues as controversial as where to draw the line between church and state. The framers of the Constitution's Bill of Rights began their blueprint for freedom by drawing exactly such a line. Th e fi rst clauses of the First Amendment provide: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Th e justices of the Supreme Court have not been wanting for advice from self-appointed guardians. Th e diffi culty with such advice is that the contestants are more convincing when they criticize their opponents' interpretations than when they seek to establish the validity of their own.

Religion and the Law

Religion and the Law PDF Author: Elizabeth Eddy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351493876
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Get Book

Book Description
There are few issues as controversial as where to draw the line between church and state. The framers of the Constitution's Bill of Rights began their blueprint for freedom by drawing exactly such a line. Th e fi rst clauses of the First Amendment provide: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Th e justices of the Supreme Court have not been wanting for advice from self-appointed guardians. Th e diffi culty with such advice is that the contestants are more convincing when they criticize their opponents' interpretations than when they seek to establish the validity of their own.

Religion and the Law of Church and State and the Supreme Court

Religion and the Law of Church and State and the Supreme Court PDF Author: Philip B. Kurland
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Church and state
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description


The Law of Church and State in the Supreme Court Revisited

The Law of Church and State in the Supreme Court Revisited PDF Author: David M. Ackerman
Publisher: Nova Publishers
ISBN: 9781594546426
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
The religion clauses of the First Amendment provide that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...." In modern times the Supreme Court has frequently construes these clauses to create, in Thomas Jefferson's oft-quoted metaphor, a "wall of separation between church and state". The Court's decisions have precipitated substantial opposition and, in particularly since the election of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency in 1980, a concerted and partly successful effort to change its separatist constructions of the religion clauses. This volume summarises the doctrinal debates and shifts on the religion clauses that have occurred on the Court during this period. It summarises and examines as well the legal effect of each of the 56 decisions the Court has handed down concerning church and state since 1980.

The Law of Church and State

The Law of Church and State PDF Author: David M. Ackerman
Publisher: Nova Publishers
ISBN: 9781590331224
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
The religion clauses of the First Amendment provide that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." In modern time the Supreme Court has frequently construed these clauses to create, in Thomas Jefferson's oft-quoted metaphor, "a wall of separation between church and state". This volume summarises the doctrinal debates and shifts on the religion clauses that have occurred on the Court during this period. It summarises and examines as well the legal effect of each of the 56 decisions the court has handed down concerning church and state since 1980.

The Constitution & Religion

The Constitution & Religion PDF Author: Robert S. Alley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
This superb collection chronicles the most important Supreme Court cases on church-state relations over the past three decades. It includes extensive coverage of the Court's major decisions concerning prayer in state legislatures, the pledge of allegiance, display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, religious displays on public property, school prayer, vouchers for religious schools, religion in science class, and much more. Beginning with a carefully prepared historical overview, which places the first amendment in the context of 18th-century debates over religious freedom, Robert Alley offers a fresh analysis of the amendment's origins. He then presents fifty recent and historical cases without editorial comment, permitting readers to arrive at their own individual interpretations. In addition to the text of the majority decision, each case is followed by the vote of the justices as well as selected dissenting opinions. Unlike news accounts and other texts, this unique volume is the only objective presentation of the justices' decisions, in the Court's own words, and it includes the entire canon of subjects that bear the label "church and state." This clearly written, accessible book will be valuable for classroom use, as a library resource, and as an excellent introductory reader for anyone interested in what the Supreme Court has decided on religion in public places and schools.

Separating Church and State

Separating Church and State PDF Author: Steven K. Green
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501762087
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Steven K. Green, renowned for his scholarship on the separation of church and state, charts the career of the concept and helps us understand how it has fallen into disfavor with many Americans. In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson distilled a leading idea in the early American republic and wrote of a wall of separation between church and state. That metaphor has come down from Jefferson to twenty-first-century Americans through a long history of jurisprudence, political contestation, and cultural influence. This book traces the development of the concept of separation of church and state and the Supreme Court's application of it in the law. Green finds that conservative criticisms of a separation of church and state overlook the strong historical and jurisprudential pedigree of the idea. Yet, arguing with liberal advocates of the doctrine, he notes that the idea remains fundamentally vague and thus open to loose interpretation in the courts. As such, the history of a wall of separation is more a variable index of American attitudes toward the forces of religion and state. Indeed, Green argues that the Supreme Court's use of the wall metaphor has never been essential to its rulings. The contemporary battle over the idea of a wall of separation has thus been a distraction from the real jurisprudential issues animating the contemporary courts.

Religious Liberty in the Supreme Court

Religious Liberty in the Supreme Court PDF Author: Terry Eastland
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
"Twenty-five" cases, decided bewteen 1940 and 1992, including the upholding of a Minnesota law in the 1983 Mueller v. Allen case, are "introduced, excerpted, and annotated", with editorial comment on "fifteen of the cases ... from such sources as the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Christian Century, and The New Republic", as well as "comment on trends in the Court's religion-clause jurisprudence and their implications for our public life" by three legal scholars. Includes index of cases and judges.

The Religion Clauses

The Religion Clauses PDF Author: Erwin Chemerinsky
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190699736
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
"The relationship between the government and religion is deeply divisive. With the recent changes in the composition of the Supreme Court, the First Amendment law concerning religion is likely to change dramatically in the years ahead. The Court can be expected to reject the idea of a wall separating church and state and permit much more religious involvement in government and government support for religion. The Court is also likely to expand the rights of religious people to ignore legal obligations that others have to follow, such laws that require the provision of health care benefits to employees and prohibit businesses from discriminating against people because of their sexual orientation. This book argues for the opposite and the need for separating church and state. After carefully explaining all the major approaches to the meaning of the Constitution's religion clauses, the book argues that the best approaches are for the government to be strictly secular and for there to be no special exemptions for religious people from neutral and general laws that others must obey. The book argues that this separationist approach is most consistent with the concerns of the founders who drafted the Constitution and with the needs of a religiously pluralistic society in the 21st century"--

That Godless Court?

That Godless Court? PDF Author: Ronald Bruce Flowers
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664228910
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The religion clauses of the First Amendment, which seem simple and clear, have been and continue to be controversial in their application. Church-state issues have never been more complex, controversial, and divisive than they are today. In this helpful and instructive book, Ronald B. Flowers explains clearly and concisely the intricacies and implications of Supreme Court decisions in the volatile area of church-state relations. This is an ideal primer for those Americans who have listened to the debates about what the Supreme Court has and has not said about the relationship between church and state, and where the boundaries between the two have been eroded. It is also ideal for use in the classroom, specifically in undergraduate courses in religion and the court, introductions to U.S. constitutional law, constitutional law and politics, and the Supreme Court. The book is also a helpful tool for pastors, clarifying contemporary church-state issues that impact their churches and parishioners directly and indirectly.

Church, State, and Original Intent

Church, State, and Original Intent PDF Author: Donald L. Drakeman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521119189
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
This provocative book shows how the justices of the United States Supreme Court have used constitutional history, portraying the Framers' actions in a light favoring their own views about how church and state should be separated. Drakeman examines church-state constitutional controversies from the Founding Era to the present, arguing that the Framers originally intended the establishment clause only as a prohibition against a single national church.