Public Schools Archives - Page 5 of 5 - LAW AND RELIGION FORUM

If there is one thing that religion clause scholars generally agree on (in fact, there may be only one thing), it is the unsatisfactory quality of religion clause doctrine, and especially Establishment Clause jurisprudence. Mark Strasser’s (Capital University) new book, Religion, Education and the State: An Unprincipled Doctrine in Search of Moorings (Ashgate 2011), appears to fit squarely within the genre. The publisher’s description follows.

In the context of education, Church and State issues are of growing importance and appear to be increasingly divisive. This volume critically examines the developing jurisprudence relating to religion in the schools beginning with Everson v. Board of Education, where the US Supreme Court discussed the wall of separation between Church and State. The study traces both how the Court’s views have evolved during this period and how, through recharacterizations of past opinions and the facts underlying them, the Court has appeared to interpret Establishment Clause guarantees in light of the past jurisprudence when in reality that jurisprudence has been turned on its head. The Court not only offers an unstable jurisprudence that is more likely to promote than avoid the problems that the Establishment Clause was designed to prevent, but approaches Establishment Clause issues in a way that decreases the likelihood that an acceptable compromise on these important issues can be reached.

The study focuses on the situation in the US but the important issue of religion, education and the state has great relevance in many jurisdictions.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the Supreme Court’s decisions regarding religion in America’s public schools are widely disregarded. No matter how many times the Court rules that officially-sponsored school prayers are unconstitutional, for example, the prayers continue. The same pattern holds with regard to public Ten Commandments displays – though here, the Court bears much of the blame. The Court has issued three decisions on public Ten Commandments displays over the past three decades, but they turn on very specific facts and fail to announce an easy principle. For example, in two decisions issued on the same day in 2005, the Court held that a display of the Commandments in a Kentucky courthouse was unconstitutional, because reasonable observers would perceive an endorsement of religion, but that a display of the Commandments on the Texas State Capitol grounds was constitutional, because, well, the display had secular elements and hadn’t seemed to bother people. One could forgive local officials for being confused.

A new Ten Commandments case has arisen in Giles County, Virginia, where the ACLU is suing the local school board in federal court for ordering that the Commandments be placed in the lobby of a local high school. The school board argues that it has displayed the Commandments along with other historical documents, like the Declaration of Independence, that show that the school is not endorsing religion as such. But the Supreme Court has been particularly suspicious of displays of the Commandments in public schools, and the facts suggest that, as in the Kentucky case, officials in Giles County surrounded the Commandments with secular documents only after some parents complained Read more